Review Summary: Too much separation leads to detachment.
I attribute my initial lackluster stance towards Arena’s seventh effort to being oversaturated with the band’s music at the time. “The Seventh Degree…” was released at the time of my first acquaintance with Arena and deep exploration of its preceding discography, so when I’ve heard the album, it was not an eagerly anticipated new LP, but “just another” Arena release for me. All previous albums left a strong and rich impression, so by the time the seventh meal course arrived, I was already full. Come to think of it, I’m not sure if I even forced myself to listen to the album in full even once, back in 2011.
Much later, a certain re-evaluation of “Seventh Degree…” took place in my head, once I was able to actually listen to it with due focus and attention from the beginning to the end, but a lot of the issues that bothered me are still there, and this is still the closest thing to “just another album” Arena ever had. Because of these shifts in attitude towards the album, for a while I was not sure how to approach a review for it. Should I focus on criticizing the record? That would be a very easy thing to do, but I hate to prey on the weak. Should I try to defend “Seventh Degree…,” because the album certainly has some merit? But there are still things that I dislike about it, ignoring them would have been unfair and a clear case of confirmation bias. So, let’s do something different. In the following paragraphs, I will first describe the most surprising aspect of “The Seventh Degree of Separation,” then the reasons why I think it doesn’t quite work as intended, and, for the closing remarks, I will single out the album’s core strength. That should do.
You’ll probably think that I’m dense, but until the last few weeks I was completely unaware that “The Seventh Degree of Separation” is a concept album. That’s right, I was surprised that a band renowned for their elaborate concept albums made… another concept album. What a sensation! And yet, all those years since 2011, I was absolutely sure that “Seventh Degree…” is just a regular album consisting of a bunch of unrelated songs. And honestly, that’s what this LP still feels like. Supposedly, the album deals with the last hour of a human life and the first hour of death or afterlife with the act of dying itself serving as the titular Seventh Degree. The concept is probably the most esoteric and convoluted Arena ever did, but it seems like it exists separately from the music for the most part, like oil and water. It just doesn’t feel like the album covers all those weighty existential matters. It’s just a bunch of rock songs and, unfortunately, they are mostly far from the best Arena could do.
Indeed, a big chunk of the album comprises of solid yet unremarkable songs alongside a couple of tracks that
almost work. Such is “One Last Au Revoir,” which possesses a memorable and dramatic chorus, yet at the same time feels too obviously tailored to be a single. Such is “Thief of Souls” that finally allows Clive Nolan’s keyboard to roam free and conjure some nice melodies after a bunch of guitar-centered tracks yet still feels somewhat diluted. The middle section of “Seventh Degree…” especially feels like the grey colors from its cover leak through into the music and taint the songs. For a long while nothing seems to work as intended, be it the band’s attempts to explore the standard rock songs format or some not very exciting experimentation.
Except that it sometimes feels like Arena did it on purpose in the end. If you take the album as a whole, you’ll see that it has a sort of spiral-like structure, starting with some solid yet by-the-numbers tracks and culminating with its best and most emotional song. This is a rare case when you really have to wait until the tail end of the album arrives to fully appreciate it. At some point, the tedium starts to recede and gives way to genuinely great songs that resemble Arena at its best. “What If?” is a turning point, a classic intelligent Arena ballad, full of memorable melodies and vocal lines. “Trebuchet” and especially “Burning Down” maintain that level of quality but with a heavier sound, and then “Tinderbox” arrives and everything is as it should be. Maybe “Seventh Degree…” is not the best Arena album, but “Tinderbox” surely is up there with the strongest Arena songs from the band’s more accomplished LPs. The song serves as a fittingly dramatic conclusion to the album, reaching the heights of Queen’s “Show Must Go On” in terms of sheer emotion, and the new singer Paul Manzi delivers a suitably theatrical performance before capping it all off with quiet “the end.” I would maybe even suggest listening to “Tinderbox” separately, before checking out the whole LP, although I don’t know how the song would work outside of the album’s context. The band’s storytelling skills are not at their best here, but they are not gone completely and allow the album to maintain a certain level of quality, despite some initial issues.
Still, I think this time Arena bit off more than it could chew. The band wanted to create another “Contagion” or “The Visitor,” conjuring an even more convoluted concept and replicating the structure of those albums with mostly shorter songs that are supposed to unite in a single narrative. Except this time, it just doesn’t happen. The concept does not fit the music, and the songs refuse to merge into a coherent structure. “Contagion” had songs that lasted barely more than a minute yet still were memorable and felt like essential parts of the story. On “Seven Degrees…” a lot of proper songs feel like just interludes, flying past the listener without leaving a substantial impression. Which is hardly surprising. It’s a miracle that an album as elegant and unusual as “Contagion” happened even once. Even a band as skilled and talented as Arena clearly struggled to achieve that level of greatness repeatedly. Unfortunately, trying to reach the heights of “The Visitor” and “Contagion” resulted in probably the most tired and pedestrian album Arena ever created, although still not a bad one by all means. What’s more unfortunate is that I don’t feel like the band ever fully recovered and rebounded from that misfire. But that’s a story for another time.
