Progressive Metal

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    Hemina – Synthetic (2012)

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    After getting and reviewing a ton of Black and Thrash Metal albums, it is quite refreshing to hear some Progressive Metal. Australia’s Hemina delivers their debut full-length release “Synthetic” through Nightmare Records. While the band wins almost no points for originality, this release is quite pleasing to hear for fans of Dream Theater, Ayreon, Pain of Salvation and such bands.

    Opening with warm-up and traditional intro track, the album gets in full swing with “To Conceive a Plan”. Featuring lush keyboards and excellent guitar work, this song is very mellow and nicely sets the mood for the musical experience that lies ahead. Clocking around 11 minutes, this song nicely showcases the band’s musical abilities and their excellent songwriting skills. The guitars are very well crafted and emotional, the drums are tights and well placed, and the vocals are pretty standard for such a release.

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    Shattered Destiny – Fragments (2012)

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    With a very diverse and interesting sound, today we have newcomers Shattered Destiny and their very professional debut EP “Fragments”. In the time when almost every band is trying to sound like somebody else, it is very refreshing to see bands like this carving their own musical history with a fresh and interesting proposal.

    Recorded around the world in places like California, Moscow and Sweden, this release is a very good integration of several musicians into a cohesive and dynamic sounding band. Brought together by mastermind JJ, Shattered Destiny breaks musical barriers and combines a Progressive Metal foundation with some more traditional Heavy and Thrash Metal influences.

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    De Profundis – The Emptiness Within (2012)

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    With nine tracks of super catchy melodic Metal, De Profundis brings us their third full-length offering “The Emptiness Within”. Combining excellent Melodic passages with Progressive elements and a hefty dosage of powerful riffing, this release has a vibe similar to the Melodic DM wave that came out of Finland in the late 90’s and early 2000’s. Don’t get us wrong, “The Emptiness Within” does feature a good amount of aggressiveness, but it is all surrounded by excellent melodic elements.

    “Delirum” opens the riffing marathon with very well defined and melodic guitars, a sound that reminded us of earlier Eternal Tears of Sorrow, and similar acts. The growls are spot on and the overall mixture of melodic guitars, pummeling drums and guitar solos is just outstanding. The guitar work courtesy of Soikot Sengupta and Roman Subbotin is very well crafted and entertaining, particularly in the dreamy ‘instrumental’ passages.

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    Oceans of Night – Domain (2011)

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    Keeping up with the Progressive Metal/Rock releases we received recently, today we have Oceans of Night’s second full-length release titled “Domain”. This duo from the USA deliver and action-packed 63 minutes of pure Progressive/Power Metal excellence divided in 10 tracks. Featuring multi-instrumentalist Scott Mosher and vocalist Scott Oliva, this album delivers a hefty dosage of crunchy guitars and very well crafted atmospheric elements that sets them apart from the rest.

     The opening track “Domain” clocks in at a massive 17 minutes, signaling the beginning of a very rich and diverse journey through the music of Oceans of Night. In this track the crunchy guitars are a notable difference from your traditional prog music, and the atmospheric keyboards add a futuristic tone to the overall track. Oliva’s vocals are excellent, filled with emotion and nicely bringing the lyrics to life. The drumming is very well structured, and while neither of the band members play the drums, they brought in a session drummer to have that natural sound.

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    Abandoned Stars – Opening Act (2011)

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    Hailing from the land of “Sheep, single malt and haggis” as the band so eloquently describes it on their promo pack; today we have Scottish Progressive Metal newcomers: Abandoned Stars. With their debut EP “Opening Act”, the band delivers 4 very well crafted radio-friendly tracks that will surely get them noticed in the scene and generate interest in their future debut full-length release.

    With a style similar to bands like Dream Theater, Rush and Yes, but with more modern and mainstream elements, the band makes a great impact in terms of songwriting and musicianship with “Opening Act” that demands the attention of the followers of the genre.

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    Nami – Fragile Alignments (2011)

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    Hailing from Andorra of all places, today we have a very interesting release with Nami’s “Fragile Alignments” album. Mixing everything from Cynic, Opeth to Meshuggah, this band delivers a lot of band for your buck. For almost 60 minutes the band delivers waves of powerful riffs perfectly arranged in a manner that only big name bands have been able to deliver after years of trying.

    Opening with the progressive instrumental “Awakening from Lethargy”, the band nicely generates some momentum before leveling your ears with the complex “The Inner Man: Materia”. In this track, the Meshuggah worship is evident, and Nami does a great job in graciously pulling off complicated segments. The guitar riffing is outstanding and the drumming is very precise, letting the vocals vent off with some heavy growls while the music is pummeling through.

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    Goldenseed - The War Is in My Mind (2012)

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    Featuring the talented multi-instrumentalist Gabriele Pala, today we have Goldenseed’s third full-length release “The War is in my Mind”. In this one-man solo-project, Gabriele delivers 11 songs clocking around 52 minutes of very interesting Progressive/Shred Metal that greatly highlight his musical skills. Each of the songs feature excellent guitar work and very solid composition skills, something that many multi-instrumentalists seem to lack and favor showing off their skills instead.

    With a very space-oriented nature, “The War Is in My Mind” kicks off with “The R38 Class”. This song features very lush keyboards and a very typical Progressive Metal. While sounding very similar to bands like Ayreon and such, Goldenseed chooses not to ruin things and does not use vocals in this release (except in the last song). Pala’s guitar skills are nicely introduced little by little and never go full on over the top, but instead they complement the music nicely.

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    Earth Burnt Black – Harrowing Catharsis (2011)

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    With a very interesting and rich sound, today we have Earth Burnt Black’s debut full-length “Harrowing Catharsis”. The band pretty much throws everything in the frying pan and delivers a very well tasty dish of well crafted and different sounding music with a nice and clear production on top of it. These types of albums are the ones we wait for at Infernal Masquerade since the combine so many different things and still manage to sound very well and powerful.

    The “Intro” track immediately gives you the feeling that this will be a Doom Metal release, but this quickly changes in the next song. “The March” features hard rocking guitars and clean vocals to start, clearly breaking away from what is expected from the intro. However, not long enough the Doom and Grooviness come back and the band delivers interesting brutal sections with both growls and screams mixed in between some more clean vocals. While this might sound completely chaotic, it actually works very well with the melodic aspect of the song.

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    Evergrey – A Decade and a Half (2011)

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    Ever since the release of their debut album “The Dark Discovery” back in 1998, Evergrey has been one of the best bands in their genre and with their newest incursion “Glorious Collision” they have widen the gap between them and any other band. With “A Decade and a Half”, the band presents a double-CD release filled with most of their greatest songs and a few live versions that keep things interesting.

    As one of our friends pointed out, if you really wanted a ‘greatest hits’ release of the band, it should have been 8 CD’s long and feature every single album they have released in their years of existence. However, we can’t really have that, but this double-CD has enough to please most of the fans of the band. Kicking off with “The Masterplan”, the band delivers their characteristic guitar work and excellent vocals of Tom Englund. As the future has shown (in “Glorious Collision”) the band’s sound centers around Englund’s efforts and everybody else can be easily replaced.

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    Transatlantic – More Never Is Enough: Live In Manchester & Tilburg 2010 (2011)

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    If Neal Morse’s Testimony 2 – Live in Los Angeles DVD’s where not enough for a dosage of excellent prog, the same promo package we got included Transatlantic’s “More Never Is Enough: Live In Manchester & Tilburg 2010” DVD portion of the release, for another 3+ hours of orgasm-inducing musical experience.

    The live DVD portion of this release features the complete Tilburg concert in all its glory and with seven professional cameras rolling. It also showcases the full band with the extra addition of Daniel Gildenlöw from Pain of Salvation. If you are a big fan of the band’s music and their latest release “The Whirlwind”, the first DVD shows the band playing this release in its entirety.

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