IQ Maintains Dominion Over Progressive Rock
British proggers return with well-crafted 13th studio album.
Thank you for spending part of your day with Michael’s Record Collection. This week, I’m excited to share my thoughts on a new album by British progressive rock band IQ, which drops on Friday from Giant Electric Pea Records.
I recently spoke to lead vocalist Peter Nicholls and guitarist Mike Holmes about the new album. Let’s get to that story, although it requires some background first.
I didn’t grow up listening to what we call progressive rock. I’m not sure I was even aware of the term until around the Napster boom just after the turn of the century. But I had been a fan of several bands in various sub-genres under the prog umbrella — Rush, Pink Floyd, Genesis, and Yes, to drop some of the bigger names.
When Napster rose, offering exposure to any/all music I’d never fully immersed myself in growing up, it opened a whole new universe for me. I dove into back catalogs of bands and artists I’d always meant to check out but could never afford to do. Being a physical media guy, I then spent a ton of money buying CDs to fill in the holes in my collection, so I suppose I didn’t Napster like everyone else was Napstering. In a small sample size of me, Napster ended up selling a lot of albums for artists. From the stuff I downloaded there, I bought what I liked and deleted what I didn’t.
Because I was finding so much great music from users sharing files on Napster, I started spending time on various band message boards to learn more about them. Many of those online forums had sections where fans would discuss other bands they loved. That led to even more discoveries, and eventually I found a few progressive rock “stations” that operated over the internet, offering a radio-like experience with very few (if any) ads and layers of new bands (some actually new and some only new to me) from all over the world. One of those bands was IQ.
At the time, I learned that IQ was considered “neo-prog,” a term assigned to a wave of progressive rock that emerged in the 1980s — in the prog multiverse, some fans considered the neo-prog label a compliment and others an insult. For me, I cared less about labels and more about whether the music sounded good, and some of the “neo-prog” bands — Marillion, Pendragon, Pallas, IQ, and others — were right up my alley.
By the time I got to IQ, Napster had been shut down. Upon message board recommendations, I bought the first IQ album, Tales from the Lush Attic. Although the production sounded dated, I loved the content, especially the epic “The Last Human Gateway.” The music was inventive and expansive, and I immersed myself in this band with a distinctive lead singer that was unlike any I’d ever heard. As I moved forward through the band’s catalog, I sensed a growth from album to album — even the two with a different lead singer, as Paul Menel replaced Peter Nicholls in the second half of the 1980s.
Shortly after I started my own progressive rock internet “radio” show in 2004, the band released Dark Matter, which I felt was IQ’s best album to that point. I played it relentlessly and still hold it in high regard. I was hooked by this point and each new album became an auto-purchase upon its release.
IQ is back with a new album to be released March 28. Dominion is the band’s 13th studio album (and first since 2019’s Resistance) and has many of the same qualities that drew me to Dark Matter, but with very much its own style.
With the exception of guitarist and principal songwriter Mike Holmes, much of the IQ lineup is made of original members who have left and returned to the band over the years. Not only did lead vocalist Nicholls leave for a couple of albums, but bassist Tim Esau was out of the band from 1989 to 2011, and drummer Paul Cook departed in 2005, returning in 2009. Keyboardist Neil Durant is the “new guy,” having joined in 2011 to replace Mark Westworth (who himself was the replacement for original keyboard player Martin Orford).
The number of songs and the way they are laid out across the album gives Dominion a flavor similar to 2004’s Dark Matter. Both albums contain five songs, but Dominion puts its most epic track (“The Unknown Door”) up front rather than at the end as the band did in 2004 with “Harvest of Souls.” The secondary epic (“Far From Here”) on Dominion is the fourth track, whereas it was “Sacred Sound” opening the proceedings on Dark Matter.
Nicholls said some of the themes on his mind in making the new album included living in the present and taking advantage of the time the band still has left to make its music.
“Kind of comes with reaching a certain age and reaching a certain point in your life is that you develop an appreciation of time, and you realize, if you didn't already realize, that it's in finite supply,” he said. “I think time and health are the most precious commodities that we have. And I think there's a feeling within the band that we know the clock is ticking. We don't know how much longer the band can keep going for, but there's every reason for the band to continue for the foreseeable future. I think we're all very positive with where the band is at the moment.
“And I think, for me, there's a kind of a feeling of now is the time to do things, and the present is the important time. So, there's a kind of an emphasis, I think, on living for the day, making sure that the life that you want to live for yourself you can make for yourself, and you can do that now. You can always delay doing things. But actually, the important thing, I think, is to do stuff now, because without being maudlin, who knows how long we've got?”
“The Unknown Door” kicks off the album in grand style. It’s a nearly 23-minute epic opening track with big synth horn sounds reminiscent of a film score. Nicholls’ voice hasn’t aged a day since 2019’s Resistance album. His vocals take center stage during the opening minutes of the epic track, accompanied at first with just keyboards by Durant and Holmes’ acoustic guitar.
The full band kicks in just shy of the five-minute mark, with mellotron sounds and other keyboard washes and patterns. Esau’s growling bass, and Cook’s drumming add density and drama, along with Holmes switching to the electric guitar. As with any good IQ epic, the song takes the listener on a journey through one of the band’s amazing stories. It stands favorably alongside IQ’s other strongest (and longest) epics, such as “Harvest of Souls,” “The Narrow Margin,” and “The Last Human Gateway.”
Holmes said the song grew out of the first eight or nine minutes, which had been written before IQ found the proper direction to conclude it. It’s a bold statement to start an album with a track longer than 20 minutes, and it’s a question the band seriously pondered prior to placing it up front in the running order.
“We always felt like the start of ‘The Unknown Door’ would be a great way to start an album,” Holmes said. “Because for the last couple of albums, we've kind of just gone, ‘Bang. Here we are!’ And it's nice to have something a bit more subtle this time. Having said that, we did have a discussion about whether, at this point in our career, we should start with a 23-minute track. But at the end of the day, it's who we are. And you know, you just gotta do you, I think.”
After the album’s longest song comes — naturally — the shortest. “One of Us” is a lovely acoustic guitar-driven ballad just over three minutes long. Holmes’ acoustic work is reminiscent of Greg Lake in “I Believe in Father Christmas” but also borrows (without stealing) from Led Zeppelin III.
“Specifically on Led Zeppelin III, Jimmy Page used that tuning a few times, and that's where I learned the tuning from,” Holmes said.
The guitar pattern is different and a bit slower than the Greg Lake song, but it has some of that flavor and tone in it. With some backing keyboards for texture, Nicholls’ beautiful, distinctive lead vocal is given plenty of space to shine through.
“I think the purpose of that track being where it was, is it gives the listener a chance to kind of draw breath and just to assimilate what they've listened to, and just kind of relax into a different kind of feeling,” Nicholls said. “I really like that track. That was the last thing to be recorded for the album. I had to go down to the studio between Christmas and New Year to do the vocals for that. It kind of clears the air a little after the onslaught of the track before it.”
The song melts seamlessly into the album’s de facto title track and first single, “No Dominion.” The first single ended up as a happy accident for the band and landed smack dab in the middle of Dominion’s five tracks.
“Actually, the music for that came out of a mistake,” Holme said. “I was in the middle of writing ‘Far from Here,’ and there's one bit in that which is like a breakdown, and it's quite a trance-y type thing going on, and I wanted to try some different chords in that section. And it just didn't work at all. But I quite liked the chords, so I put those to one side, and it really fell out of that. And it was really quite quick. It was in a couple of days that it had been written, and I sent it off to Pete.”
The song opens with a lush and layered keyboard section before providing space for Nicholls’ lovely verse vocal. The alternating gentler and denser moments of this song pair perfectly together, building a terrific, atmosphere. Holmes provides an impassioned solo near the end prior to a fadeout that leads into the sound of the winding of a musical box.
The music box mechanical winding sounds precede a melody that introduces “Far From Here,” the album’s other epic. It clocks in at just under 13 minutes, but it passes much more quickly than expected, much like “Sacred Sound” does on Dark Matter. Nicholls opens the song with vocals over sparse musical accompaniment, in which the musical box melody becomes a bit more dissonant. The song explores the concept of the two halves of the brain applying to two people in a relationship.
What if the right had nothing left
Would the left get nothing right?
“I remember seeing a thing on TV, and it was saying the brain operates in two halves, and it works best when the two halves are in harmony,” Nicholls said. “And if the right side of the brain doesn't work, then the left side of the brain doesn't work. And I kind of aligned that to people, you know, people that might have lived their lives together.”
That wasn’t the only topic on Nicholls’ mind when he wrote the lyrics to “Far From Here.”
“My mother passed away two years ago, and so that was kind of very much in my mind,” he said. “I think it affects who you are when you lose a parent, or when you lose your second parent. It puts you in a place in your life where you kind of never imagined you would be. And so, the end of that track particularly is about my mom. And I think there was a was a feeling when we were working on that track that it was quite a definitive IQ piece. I think when I was hearing the demo, I could hear a lot of kind of IQ tropes, if you like — stuff that we were known for. But I think within that, it was actually changing a lot of the rules, and it was kind of presenting us in a different way.”
The song’s back half has a vintage soaring IQ buildup in intensity that gives way to a sparkling Holmes guitar solo. It closes with a plaintive Nicholls vocal section over a soft keyboard soundscape, with piano and perhaps a smidge of guitar at the end, followed by dreamy key textures, carrying it into the eight-minute closing track, “Never Land.” The closing vocal section of “Far From Here” is a testament to Nicholls’ ability to use his voice to coax every ounce of emotional impact out of his lyrics.
The gentle transition from “Far From Here” into album closer “Never Land” is seamless to the point it sounds like a continuation of the same song. It’s important to note this is not a song about Peter Pan’s fabled location. It continues the idea of two people being halves of one whole, and it’s about not preparing for the finality of losing a partner.
“If you're sharing your life with a partner, you're living that life with that person, and you don't really ever give any thought to how it's going to end,” Nicholls said. “Or you concentrate on flying without giving any thought to coming down from that. So that was the thinking with that.”
With all we knew, we couldn’t understand
We learned to fly but never land
Somehow the days will fade away to nothing
In all, the time has shown now that I’m alone
Do I still follow on this journey without you?
It’s a heartbreakingly beautiful introductory section to the eight-minute song. The first four minutes of gentle and gorgeous introspection gives way to the full band kicking in halfway through, taking the intensity of Nicholls’ lyrics — delivered beautifully through his vocal performance — to a new level. The final minute of the track returns to the dreamy, gentle tone of the song’s intro, softly guiding the listener to the end of Dominion. The beauty of “Never Land” may have many listeners reaching for a box of tissues, and I can neither confirm nor deny that I am included in that subset. I can, however, admit it is my favorite song on the album after my first dozen listens.
Nicholls said he was excited about the prospect of rehearsing “Never Land” and making it part of the live IQ set.
“I have to say, I think musically, it's a genius song. And I've said so to Mike,” Nicholls said. “I think it has a real spirit and a real light to it, that song. And I think it's one of the songs on this album I think is a really different kind of IQ, and I'm really proud of that — that at this point, after all these years, we could still do something that's going to surprise people.
“I hope people enjoy (Dominion) and I hope they they're surprised by some of the things on it, and I hope they hear a strong, powerful, confident, purposeful, band, still producing great music at 44 years.”
Dominion was originally envisioned as another double IQ album, and more material was recorded than appears on the record, but in the end, the band opted to put it out as a single-LP release.
“We've got some stuff where everything has already been recorded. I guess we've got between 50 minutes and an hour's worth of material, half of which is pretty much set and almost ready to go,” Holmes said. “The reason why we didn't put this out as bonus material or anything is simply because we had already committed to quite a few shows this year to promote this album, and we just wouldn't have been able to do those songs justice in time. So the decision was taken to put (Dominion) out as a single album, and actually, in retrospect, I think it was the right decision, because it feels like a good length. It feels like it's a natural flow from start to end, and anything else would probably be superfluous, I think, to the whole album experience.”
After more than four decades of making music together, Nicholls said one of the strengths of the band is that it is a family of friends.
“We've known known each other for a long time now,” he said. “These are lifelong friendships, really. Mike and I have known each other nearly 50 years now. And the friendships, I think, are the glue that bind the band together. That's the important thing. You know, you couldn't be in a band at this point and not get along with the people that you're with. We talk about the IQ family, but it is a real thing. And I think for me, IQ has been the bedrock of my life. It's been a constant in my life when other things haven't been constant.”
IQ normally performs live about 10 to 12 times per year, but the band will do about twice as many live shows in 2025 to promote Dominion, including Cruise to the Edge in April, a couple of shows in Canada, and the bulk of the shows in Europe.
Dominion is available digitally, on CD, and on vinyl in multiple colors.
To find out more about IQ, visit the band’s official website.
You can preorder the album on CD or vinyl now through the Giant Electric Pea online shop.
Tracklist:
The Unknown Door (22:34)
One of Us (3:11)
No Dominion (6:25)
Far From Here (12:44)
Never Land (8:16)
For my entire interview with Nicholls and Holmes, check out the video below or download/stream Episode 146 of the Michael’s Record Collection podcast. In addition to discussing the new album, the two longtime bandmates touched on their musical beginnings, their first favorite albums, how IQ came to be (including how Nicholls pretended to be a vocalist until he became one), how they write their songs, and much more.
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