The third Red Sand album takes a hard subject for its title and its theme, and pares the band back to a core of four. It keeps the shape the group had settled into: two long pieces, two short ones, and Caron’s guitar at the centre.

The short version

Released in 2007 on the band’s own SPBN Music label, catalogue SPBN 003, on compact disc. Simon Caron writes, plays guitar and now takes the keyboards as well; Steff Dorval sings. Four tracks, around forty-four minutes. It is the darkest-themed record in the band’s early run, and the title is not decoration — it names the subject the album is built around.

A grimmer subject, and the band down to a core

The band contracts to four: Simon Caron on guitar and keyboards, Steff Dorval on vocals, Mathieu Gosselin on bass and Perry Angelillo on drums. With no separate keyboard player, Caron covers more of the record himself, and the group is now recognisably the lean unit it would remain — a guitarist-writer, a singer, a rhythm section. The subject is handled at the level of theme and title rather than in graphic detail, in keeping with a band whose lyrics run to the reflective rather than the sensational, and this page follows that lead rather than dwelling on the subject.

The sound

Dark-toned, suite-built neo-prog. The mood is heavier than on the two records before it, and the writing leans on the long forms the band favoured: two extended pieces carry most of the album, framed by shorter ones. Caron taking the keyboards as well as the guitar gives the record a more unified, single-author feel than the earlier albums, where a separate keyboard player shaped the sound. It is neo-progressive rock used for a serious subject, and it holds its tone without tipping into melodrama or spectacle, which is the harder thing to do with material like this.

Reading up on prog? The books go deeper →

The songs

‘Human Trafficking’ opens the album at sixteen minutes twenty-eight, the title piece and one of the two long tracks. ‘Lost’, second, is a short piece that at least one listener account describes as instrumental, though the credits do not confirm it, so this page does not state it as fact. ‘Regrets’ is the longest thing here at eighteen minutes forty-four, the second of the two extended pieces. ‘Loving Child’ closes the record at four minutes forty-five. The two long pieces carry the album and the two short ones frame them, the same architecture the band had used on the debut and would keep returning to.

Reception and legacy

No chart placing or certification is documented. Progressive rock listeners rate it 3.28 out of 5 across 63 ratings on ProgArchives, the lowest of the band’s early records. No review by a named critic in a named publication has been traced. The lower standing is worth reporting plainly: a grim concept and two eighteen-minute pieces make it the least immediately inviting of the band’s first four albums, and its standing reflects that rather than any drop in craft.

The verdict

This is the album for listeners already sold on the band, rather than the one to start with. It is well made and seriously intended, and the two long pieces are as strong as anything on Gentry, but the weight of the subject and the length of the writing make it a demanding listen. Come to it after the debut and Gentry, knowing what it is about and what it asks. It is the end of the band’s first phase; a change of singer for one album and, later, a long gap follow before the band’s second act.

Browse the bookshelf in the footer →