With more than forty years in the music business and twenty + albums, YES made their comeback with a new album, "Fly From here". This album came out a decade after "Magnification" that came out in 2001 and was the last album with the legendary Jon Anderson on vocals.

YESis one of the pioneers of the Progressive Rock genre along with GENESIS, RUSH, KING CRIMSON and PINK FLOYD. Still, YES were and still is the band that made Keyboards a cool instrument to play. The band's earlier keyboardist Rick Wakeman was and still is, even though is not in the band anymore, one of the keys of YES's sound and one of the most influential players in Rock and Metal. I can say the same about Steve Howe and of course Bill Bruford that was on three of the bands that I mentioned earlier.

The thing is with bands like YES is that they had to make a sort of what I call "a deal with the devil" in several points of their careers and wrote a song that got to the top five that made earned them millions. However, this is also the only song that the average Joe knows from the band and I am talking about, "Owner Of A Lonely Heart" that presented YES as an affordable band and was their big comeback after a two year hiatus. That song and album is not the true YES that YES fans love but that's the story of every big band that wants to break into mainstream.

"Fly From Here", with almost an entirely new lineup along with a new lead vocalist. On this one Howe and the guys tried, as I saw it, to take YES back to the past, back to the old band we knew and loved. They did it very well, this album really had that 7's vibe and feel to it. It started with the track "Fly From Here" that is a concept song that is divided into five parts with an overture. This epic and progressive song brought everything we could expect from YES and even more. There were great rhythm sections, great lead guitar and keyboard work, nice melodies, odd times signatures and strange harmonies that were topped by a very good vocal line from new singer, Benoît David.

Unfortunately, the second part of the album was a little less good. Don't get me wrong, the songs were good but it just sounded like a mix of what the band has done thirty or forty years ago while presenting nothing that is fresh or modern. I don't think a band like YES needs to try to reinvent themselves but we still are in 2011 and you need to keep up with the others and try to stay fresh, especially with bands like KARMAKANIC and TRANSATLANTIC among others that just took YES's and RUSH's music and took it to the next level. That is what, in my opinion, YES couldn't get with this album .

This is definitely a great comeback album, especially with a new lineup but still it sounded like there were no news instead of YES news. However, YES fans will love it, and if you don't know the band it is a nice album to listen to in order to reach the band's vibe.