As much as The Moody Blues have earned the right to make a mediocre album, they shouldn't have been given the keys to the studio without a better batch of ideas than what ended up on Keys of the Kingdom. Like Sur La Mer three years earlier, many of the songs on here feel like prefabricated studio pop: programmed drum beats, sterile keyboards and soulless guitars pop up in the speakers seemingly untouched by human hands, compounded by brass arrangements and backing singers that were never a part of the Moodies' original vision. Perhaps Once Is Enough says it best; most listeners will quickly put this aside as an underinspired exercise and seek refuge in the band's glory days. Yet fans will strain to find that familiar glint of gold in Keys o ... See more