IV

IV is the fourth album and a comeback after a full thirteen years. Following the band’s 2001 reunion, it was released on Frontiers in 2006 and is the most progressive work of their career. Much of the lyric is sung from the perspective of US soldiers stationed overseas, sparked when Kip, playing solo shows at military bases, was moved by the soldiers’ stories. The cover, showing a soldier watched over by angels, was drawn by comic artist Ethan Van Sciver, known for DC and Marvel. While it keeps the big choruses of 1980s melodic hard rock, the songs gain more mature structure and weight. The drive of “Right Up Ahead” and the armed-forces tribute “Blue Suede Shoes” stand out; for the latter, the US military later presented the band with a plaque and a flag that had flown in Iraq. High technique interlocks around Reb Beach and Rod Morgenstein, but the playing always serves the song’s flow. Rather than nostalgia, it presents a present-tense musicality that betrays no thirteen-year gap.