torture

Trust me ponkine it's not just the "prog haters" that hate Tales From Topographic Oceans it's a much more diverse crowd than that. I appreciate and respect Prog Rock and I love Yes. This album is maligned, dismissed, and bashed for a reason. A lot of good reasons actually. Unfortunately this album is where Yes slipped from prog rock command and came tumbling down with tremendous force. After losing incredible drummer Bill Bruford Yes tries to go too far too fast. It's like a marathon runner who loses his leg and then skips rehab and decides to run another soon after getting the prosthetic leg put on. It's just asking for failure. And that is exactly what Yes got. An uninteresting, pompous, overly-grandiose, Japanese scriptures induced failure. This album sounds forced, like they were trying way too hard to impress the "prog rock cult" that they had help create instead of just kicking back and doing what they do best and appealing to all audiences. Instead of the usual epic success they found out the hard way what it is like to have an epic failure. Not to worry though... They would be back making good stuff soon after this.

This is probably the most maligned, bashed and dismissed album in Progressive Rock. All the well-known prog haters (Rolling Stone, Robert Christgau, etc) had a field day with this album, but if you really LISTEN to all the 4 pieces is such astounding musical experience. My favourites are 'Ritual' and 'The Revealing Science of God'. Don't pass this one up and listen with open ears and mind

By no means a masterpiece but it doesn't deserve all the scorn it's accumulated over the years. I admire it's ambition even when it falls on it's face.