Lacking the wit and melodic appeal of last year's surprisingly successful I Robot, the Alan Parsons Project's third studio-rock oratorio is a hollow disappointment. Where I Robot was constructed on a nifty riddle–it's cinematic space rock flaunted the technology its scenario cautioned against–Pyramid uses the mystery of the pyramids as a jumping-off point for some bombastic musings on the vanity of human wishes and the passing of all things. Producer Parsons' aural style remains impressively three-dimensional, but given musical themes this trite and lyrics this sententious ("And the days of my life are but grains of sand/As they fall from your open hand"), the results frequently echo the kitsch soundtracks of Fifties Hollywood Biblical epics.

The album's one lively moment, "Pyramania," spoofs the recent pyramid fad in a mechanized post-Beatles style. Which suggests that the creators of Pyramid–Alan Parsons, writer Eric Woolfson and arranger Andrew Powell–simply chose the pyramid theme because it sounded like a commercial "head" subject, not because it particularly fascinated them. (RS 271)

STEPHEN HOLDEN