In a genre like psychedelic rock where artists often depend more on aesthetic and embellishment than actual songcraft, it's easy for listeners to have to have the wool pulled over their eyes by groups with the superficial talent of disguising ten-minute-plus jam sessions as epic songs. Jamming is one thing, failing to compose is another. The true test of mettle for bands of this style is the ability to find the line between whimsy and pointlessness, and to toe it gracefully. Luckily for would-be Titan listeners, the band offers fair warning with an album title that shows clearly just what side of the line they've tripped onto.

Despite its airy atmosphere and moderate pacing, A Raining Sun of Light and Love for You and You and You and Blah Blah Blah often feels like a white knuckled roller-coaster ride into nowhere. Although coherent as a unit, each of the four lengthy tracks on A Raining Sun show an almost contemptuous disregard for movement and resolution. Instead the band is geared toward presenting everything that is anathema to the ethic of heavy metal. Neither uplifting, enlivening, revolting, or depressing – Titan only creates impossibly overdrawn and confounding slices of life that are little more than the revival rock's answer to Phish.

The album starts promisingly enough with layered vocals reminiscent of Genesis' early Canterbury rock that give way to a truly heavy one-two chord progression and a swirling keyboard line. If graded on a scale against the material to follow, the first seven of minutes “Annals of the Former World” earns an A+. However, while the crushing interplay between keys and chords may momentarily trick the listener into thinking they are about to be treated to a modern but classically minded psychedelic rock album, the overlong crescendo that follows begins an unraveling process that continues until the album's final note. The calculation and confident execution of the album's early moments degrade and give way to a lethargically delivered series of unrelated musical vignettes that appear to be stacked next to each other according to the order in which they were cooked up in the studio. Often these parts are added for no other reason to increase the length of each song. Because, as we all know, a prog song ain't worth shit if it's less than ten minutes long.

Without fail Titan come across as a vapid and only ostensibly prog minded bar band. While I'd like to soften the edges of this review by commending the band's ability to spontaneously jam in synchronicity, it doesn't really come off as terribly authentic outside of a live setting. It also doesn't make for very compelling listening.

Ironically, for a band that labels themselves as being progressive, Titan's songs do little more than stumble around in small circles. Nothing beyond the overdriven guitars and analog production on A Raining Sun has anything to do with what makes progressive and psychedelic rock worthwhile. With bands like Comets on Fire, Danava, and Burning Saviours making solid contributions to this genre, I don't see any reason to waste your time with Titan.