Style: Neo-prog, symphonic prog (Clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Yes, Steven Wilson, Marillion, Genesis, Frost*
Country: United Kingdom
Release date: 28 March 2025
There’s a certain kind of excited anticipation in revisiting an artist you used to love long ago. For me, it often jogs memories of doing excessively deep musical dives while playing video games in high school in the early 2010s. One such band was IQ and their 2004 record, Dark Matter, my first foray into neo-prog and a beloved album of mine throughout high school. Unfortunately, Dark Matter got lost to the sands of time when I went to college and became tainted by the Gospel of Djent™, so imagine my surprise when I saw IQ in our review queue after fifteen years with a new record called Dominion. What better time than now to catch up?
Dominion betrays an evolution in IQ’s visage only noticeable in a fifteen-year absence. There is an air of familiarity in the wispy, keyboard-led neo-prog passages that weave through compositions short and long, some generously reprising a central idea (“No Dominion”) and others throwing repetition to the wayside as they yearn to ebb and flow around a core feeling (“The Unknown Door”). “One Of Us” is a wholly acoustic piece that acts as a palate cleanser to the monstrous opening epic “The Unknown Door”, whose intro showcases a gentle acoustic section redolent of Jack Johnson. Heavier moments seldom surface, but their presence always centralizes a piece, such as the extended jam in the center of “The Unknown Door” and the pounding, kinetic drums of “Far From Here” dueling with groovy guitar work.
The ambitious song structures featured on Dominion are standard fare for IQ, but a nagging lack of direction—and occasionally, profound disinterest—pervades many of its bulkier tracks. The strongest thread holding together “The Unknown Door”, for example, is vibes, as little is working towards the track’s cohesion outside of a few vague lyrical ideas. Its middle section is quite fun, indulging in dramatic synth-prog cinematics that juxtapose against smooth and cool organ-led moments, but none of it feels particularly interconnected: you could swap around ideas or even take a couple out to the exact same effect. Additionally, the bookending eight or so minutes feel more like an exercise in excess than anything, lumbering from gentle heartfelt moment to gentle heartfelt moment. “No Dominion”, on the other hand, is much more capable of maintaining structure around its crystalline keyboards and beautifully melodic solo. Unfortunately, the track almost immediately loses the plot regardless by surrounding its keyboards with pleasant-but-toothless verses, amorphous instrumentation, and grating flickers of autotune in Peter Nicholls’ vocals. “Far From Here” succeeds the most at balancing cohesion and interest, slowly building up its relatively gritty instrumentation into a colorful crescendo across its runtime and bringing the listener down as gently as they were lifted up.
IQ try to find a happy middle ground between more concrete sentiments in their lyricism and the oblique word-painting of Jon Anderson-era Yes on Dominion. However, much of its writing sits in an uncomfortable middle ground between these two extremes, struggling to shine in either respect. Dominion’s more tasteful lyrics emerge on closer “Never Land”, nostalgically lamenting the loss of a loved one, and “Far From Here” has some admittedly fun moments in the word play ‘Right or the left brain, who’ll decide? / What if the right had nothing left / Would the left get nothing right?’ On the flip side, the verse ‘Was it always going to be how it appeared / Beneath the moonlight? / What if I had told you anything you want to hear / Would that make it all right?’ from “One of Us” is not only prosaic but also rhythmically clunky, awkwardly jammed into the track’s meter. “The Unknown Door” features lines like ‘Beyond the veil of night / Unaware anywhere, is there still time? / Won’t be long from this moment on / With two of one kind and all we leave behind’, which are encased in hopelessly elliptical symbolism.
The last synth pads of “Never Land” fade out, and for a few seconds, I look at Dominion’s cover in silence. Its heavier moments perk my ears up without much fuss, but the record leaves little impression on me due to a lack of songwriting focus in its more extended pieces and lyricism that just doesn’t work most of the time. Like a pleasant at first but ultimately uncomfortable exchange with an old friend, the connection I had with IQ as a teenager just doesn’t really hold up under current circumstances. Is there anything left to say, or should I just take my leave and move on? It is getting late, after all, and I still have some errands I need to run. Maybe in another fifteen years, IQ and I will be different again in a way that’s more similar.
Recommended tracks: Far From Here, One of Us
You may also like: Dry River, Moon Safari, Ice Age, Kyros
Final verdict: 5/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram
Label: Giant Electric Pea – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website
IQ is:
– Peter Nicholls (vocals)
– Mike Holmes (guitars)
– Tim Esau (bass)
– Neil Durant (keyboards)
– Paul Cook (drums)
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