This is a wonderful album, from the moment the first punches of "Dance on a Volcano" jump out of Mike Rutherford's gentle guitar intro, to Collins revisiting "Supper's Ready" lyrics during the fade-out of "Los Endos". Strong rockers like "Dance on a Volcano", "Squonk", and "Los Endos" are intermixed with magical ballads like "Entangled" and "Ripples". David Hentschel's production is clearer than on most previous Genesis albums; in particular, Collins' drums are more audible in the mix than ever before. With Gabriel's strong personality gone, keyboardist Tony Banks began to dominate the band; he worked keyboard solos into everyone else's songs, and got a couple of long-dormant songs of his own ("A Trick of the Tail", "Mad Man Moon") onto the album. But everything Banks does works here (not always the case on the follow-up, "Wind and Wuthering"). A side effect of Banks' emergence was that guitarist Steve Hackett got fewer leads to play; on "Mad Man Moon", he barely appears. Hackett and Rutherford use the trademark Genesis dual 12-string acoustic sound to great effect on Hackett's "Entangled" and Rutherford's "Ripples". "Los Endos" provides a big finish with a blazing instrumental that uses a riff from "It's Yourself" (a song that was left off the album, but is available on the "Archive #2" boxed set) and throws in reprises of "Dance on a Volcano" and "Squonk"; the song became the closer of Genesis' live set for over a decade. For lovers of time signatures, "Dance on a Volcano" and the bridge of "Mad Man Moon" are in 7/8, while the keyboard solo in "Robbery Assault & Battery" is in a near-uncountable 13/8. This is a close second to "Foxtrot" as my favorite Genesis album.

(1=poor 2=mediocre 3=pretty good 4=very good 5=phenomenal)