Progressive Metal

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    Evergrey – Glorious Collision (2011)

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    With a revamped lineup, Tom S. Englund and company return with what is probably the band’s best release in a few years. With “Glorious Collision” the band reaches new heights thanks to the technical brilliance and catchiness of all the songs presented in this release. As we all know over the years, Tom is great at crafting very somber lyrics and bringing them to life with his gifted vocal style.

    “Glorious Collisions” feels like a much needed reboot in Evergrey to more forward with more progressive ideas and rediscover their dark and emotional sound. Since the opening track “Leave it behind”, a very mystical aura enshrouds this release and it’s never released until the end of the album, a truly magnificent accomplishment.

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    Ironwood - Storm Over Sea (2010)

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    With a very confusing approach to music, today we have Ironwood, a band that seems to suffer from multiple personality disorder and plays a very wide variety of music genres in a very disconnected way. However, at some moments the band reminds us of Borknagar and such bands that mix and match genres in very crafty ways.

    Hailing from Australia, “Storm Over Sea” is Ironwood’s second full-length release and shows the band trying to find their own sound, or just playing a bunch of random things together and hoping for the best. Starting off with “When it’s all Over” a very Folk/Progressive piece, the band will surely grab your attention, but will confuse you immediately after with “Hail Sign” a very ‘random’ song in our opinion.

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    Circle II Circle – Consequence of Power (2010)

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    After their ‘decent’ 2003 debut album “Watching in Silence”, Circle II Circle is been in free-fall releasing several uninspired albums and “Consequence of Power” is not the exception to that trend. With very dull songs and a very bland production, “Consequence of Power” is another album that will greatly be un-noticed by the community and fans of Zak Stevens.

    As you can imagine, Zak Stevens’s vocals are the best of this otherwise very boring release. Zak delivers a very emotional and solid vocal performance to very dull sounding and repetitive songs, so it’s like sprinkling a turd with 24k gold flakes, making the end-product still not appealing.

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    The Ocean – Anthropocentric (2010)

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    A few months after the release of “Heliocentric”, we get “Anthropocentric”, the more aggressive and crushing continuation (and conclusion) to the band’s critique on Christianity started with “Heliocentric”. While The Ocean still incorporates some of their traditional classical instruments in “Anthropocentric”, this release is by far much more aggressive and straight forward than their previous one.

    With another 50 minutes of monumental Progressive Sludge/Metal, the band greatly enhances the listening experience of “Heliocentric”, we found ourselves playing both records back to back in order to get the full effect and conceptual message of this very well crafted releases. The band immediately starts with a very crushing track in “Anthropocentric”, often weaving back and forth between pounding riffs with harsh vocals and brilliant clean vocal harmonies and more melodic guitar lines.

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    Creation’s End – A New Beginning (2010)

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    Coming from the minds of two North American musicians today we have “A New Beginning”, the debut full-length release of Creation’s End. Featuring musicians such as Mike Dimeo (Ex-Masterplan, Ex-Riot) and guitar wizard Marco Sfogli (James LaBrie band), this debut album will blow you away with its amazingly crafted Progressive Metal songs.

    Creation’s End features a wide variety of influences, making them not just another Progressive Metal band, but a force to be reckoned since they touch so many genres in the 8 impressive tracks of “A New Beginning”. The band has something in store for everybody, being soaring vocals, guitar acrobatics, and a nice dark atmosphere surrounding the album.

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    Star One – Victims of the Modern Age (2010)

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    As one of the most anticipated releases of 2010, today we have Star One’s second full-length album “Victims of the Modern Age”. After seven years of waiting, Arjen Lucassen brings us a brilliant Progressive Metal/Rock space journey with “Victims of the Modern Age”.

    As you can always expect with any project where Arjen Lucassen is involved, the listener is treated to a wide variety of haunting songs featuring some of the best vocal arrangements and brilliant instrumentation on any album released in 2010. While the similarity to the last few Ayreon albums is very high, Arjen manages to craft songs that  capture the listeners attention and transports them to a different world.

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    Amorphis - Magic & Mayhem - Tales from the Early Years (2010)

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    If you’ve been following Infernal Masquerade for a while, you should know that we are one of the biggest Amorphis fans ever. When this release was announced we had big smiles in our heads since after seeing the band perform this classic songs with the ‘latest’ line-up and completely blowing us away, we wanted to have them on studio-quality recording and blast them all day long, since 7 out of the 13 songs in this album are some of our favorites of all time.

    “Magic & Mayhem - Tales from the Early Years” features 12 songs (plus one bonus track) that have been re-recorded and somewhat re-arranged to fit the band’s current dynamic sound. These songs are taken from “The Karelian Isthmus”, “Tales from the Thousand Lakes”, and “Elegy” albums.

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    Lava Engine – In Limbo (2010)

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    In a day that almost everybody is doing what has worked for somebody else, playing it safe and avoiding any kind of creativity seems to be the typical approach ‘new’ bands take to making music. Luckily for us Lava Engine actually tries to craft their own unique sound and actually manage to create pretty solid compositions with intricate musical palettes that sound very well when mixed in together.

    Hailing from Sweden, Lava Engine brilliantly merges Progressive Metal elements with some ‘Symphonic’ elements and creates a very uniquely sounding Experimental Metal sound that many bands will surely envy. The band’s combination of powerful riffs, keyboard arrangements, and well crafted vocal lines, carries their second EP “In Limbo” from start till finish and hopefully lands them a record deal.

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    Enslaved – Axioma Ethica Odini (2010)

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    The masters of Progressive/Experimental Black Metal return with a super impressive release that tops anything they have done before this album. With “Axioma Ethica Odini”, Enslaved shows no signs of slowing down, compromising, or playing it safe. The band maintains the high musical standards they set with “Isa”, “Ruun”, and “Vertebrae”, and manage to push things a bit further on this long-awaited release.

    It has been years since we liked a Black Metal release as much as “Axioma Ethica Odini”, and through our listening experience of this brilliant album we can’t avoid using comparisons to Borknagar’s “Olden Domain”, Primordial’s “A Journey's End”, and Enslaved’s “Isa” among other is in terms of musicianship and innovation for their time. While there are many Psychedelic, Progressive and Experimental elements in “Axioma Ethica Odini”, the core roots of the album emanate from well made and aggressive Black Metal that is non-compromising and never feels watered down, but rather enriched by these elements.

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    Fen – Trails out of Gloom (2010)

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    Sometimes in our review queue some albums get lost in the mix and we don’t get to them until ‘late’. Unluckily for us we didn’t heard this majestic release from Fen (from Canada not the UK one) and now we can’t stop listening to it in order to pay attention to newer releases that need to be heard.

    Before the confusion set’s in, this Canadian outfit plays Progressive Rock/Metal and it should not be mixed up with UK’s Fen (that play’s Atmospheric Black Metal/Post-rock). The first impressions we had of this CD where outstanding since the band has managed to craft 9 Progressive Rock/Metal anthems unlike many bands are able to do these days. After further listening, we can’t stop agreeing that this is surely the Progressive Rock/Metal album of the year for us as of August.

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