"In Absentia" is Porcupine Tree's (PT) 12th album, it was released in Sept 2002. I only discovered PT about 12 months ago and I’ve snapping up all of their albums ever since.

PT are a British Progressive Rock band that formed in the ‘90s and it is the brain child of Steve Wilson. It’s said that PT are one of the principle bands that kept Prog-Rock alive in the UK.

I know Prog-Rock is a dirty word to a lot of people, but I can assure you that there are no 20 minute drum solos on this album, just excellent tracks with good lyrics played by talented musicians.  A lot of the tracks are quite dark, not as dark as, for instance, Nine Inch Nails, but certainly not the usual “boy meets girl” type of stuff. If you’re not into darker themes then PT probably isn’t for you, however, you’ll never know unless you give them a spin. I’d recommend this ablum or their latest album, Deadwing. There are some MP3 samples of Deadwing at PT’s website.

You can find out more about the band at http://www.porcupinetree.com. Or, you can have a look at their Wikipedia entry here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porcupine_Tree. For the album lyrics of “In Absentia” go here: http://www.porcupinetree.com/discography.details.cfm?albumid=12.

Enjoy.