It has been a long time Vulgar Unicorn’s guitarist Bruce Soord decided to stretch his wings and create another vehicle for his music, but I hadn’t realised that it was 1999 when ‘Abducting The Unicorn’ came out; it all seems so very long ago now. Over the years Bruce has kept developing the sound of the band, and in many ways is still very ‘progressive’, but to be honest that label may not be used much by many reviewers these days. To me it is truly progressive in that the band has kept changing and are bringing in loads of influences, most notably lots of Muse with some Porcupine Tree and Radiohead, and aren’t afraid to mix up the instrumentation. But while I think that “Believe A World” is a great example of progressive music, i.e. music that is trying to break down barriers and cross genres (some great strings, simple staccato piano chords, combined with a pop mentality and a great distorted guitar break) there will be many that do not and instead will call this alternative rock.
Yes, that is indeed one way of looking at it, but frankly who cares about labels anyway? It is just a way of describing music so that someone reading a comment might get an idea of what the music is about and then may make a decision based on that. In this case it is definitely a case of if you enjoy the bands mentioned above then this is an extremely polished rock album that you will gain a great deal from and you ought to investigate further.
