Power and the Passion

Much like Eloy's 1973 LP, Inside, Power and the Passion acts as a transitional album. With more weaknesses than strengths, it contains all the elements that would ensure the artistic success of future albums like Dawn and Ocean. For the first time, the group develops a single story over two LP sides. Gordon Bennit (who had penned down the lyrics to "Plastic Girl" from the previous year's Floating) developed a narrative in which Jamie, the son of a scientist, absorbs a "time eroding" drug and finds himself in Paris, in the year 1358. He meets Jeanne, whom he introduces to marijuana. After time spent in jail following a peasants' mutiny against their landlord, Jamie finds a eccentric magician that sends him back to his own time frame. The various episodes of this story are not well articulated, but singer Frank Bornemann has managed to write songs that fit the specific mood of each one. The introduction of synthesizers, Mellotron, and electric piano in "Love Over Six Centuries," "Imprisonment," and "The Bells of Notre Dame" announce the direction of the next albums, while the "Introduction," "Daylight," and "Back Into the Present" stay closer to the hard-rocking edge of earlier efforts. Paradoxically, this duality is what gives Power and the Passion its character and compensates for its structural flaws. ~ François Couture, Rovi