Well, after a couple of months obcessing the band Yes I can now cease, having recently purchased the reissued Tormato. No, its not a total piece of crap or anything, but this is definately a case of the wheels coming off the car. There are some good ideas here and there, but the songs on this album are anywhere near fleshed out or brought to any satisfying conclusion. What amazes me is that this album is done within a year of the brilliant return-to-form, Going For The One. There are a few moments here ala GFTO, like 'Onward', 'Madrigal' and 'Future Times', but there is also some really cringe inducing moments like 'Don't Kill The Whale' (the music to 'whale' is okay) and 'Arriving UFO' and 'Circus of Heaven'. While songs like 'Release,Release' and 'Silent Wings Of Freedom' herald the direction future Yes albums would take, they definately hadn't mastered the sound here. At least half the band would go on to make the superb Drama album, though few would ever hear it. Tormato might have been a necessary step for Yes, but its a forgetable album for their fans.

This disc is rich in bonus material, with more bonus tracks than actual songs, songs that are more compelling than half the stuff on the original album. One of them, called 'Everybody's Song', is actually an early demo of 'Does It Really Happen' from the album Drama with Jon on lead vocal. As much as Trevor Horn deserves props for his contribution to the Yes canon, it would have been great if Jon had stuck around.