Hemina – Synthetic (2012)

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.

Spreading over 11 tracks, the band delivers nearly 80 minutes of excellent music but with a lack of originality, there is nothing we would say it’s groundbreaking or fresh. Some of the songs nicely bleed into each other, making this kind of cool and giving the album the feeling of having longer pieces than what the songs actually last. The solos on “The Boy is Dead” is probably one of the best parts in this release. With a ballad edge, “For All the Wrong Reasons” is a nice track that changes the mood a bit, but the weird folkish clean guitars seem a bit out of place.

The futuristic keyboards of “And Now to Find a Friend” and “With What I See” give you a nice Ayreon edge, but with heavier guitar work in some parts. The production on this release is extremely good, and on tracks like “Even in Heaven” and “Conduit to the Sky”, you can really appreciate all the details that the band carves into their songs. Our favorite track of this release is the monumental 13-minute epic “Divine”. In this song the atmosphere is top notch and creates a very intricate and chaotic track that nicely changes moods as it goes along. The vocals are quite nice and there are even some semi-growls before the best guitar solo in this release.

If you like Progressive Metal there is no doubt that you will enjoy this release and its nearly 80 minutes of music. However, if you are expecting something that deviates from the norm, this is not a place to be looking for it. The band does a great job in crafting music that is well written and very intricate, but they just forgot to add their own signature sound to it. The musicians are clearly talented, and if Hemina manages to sound like the greats (DT, PoS, Ayreon, etc), they clearly have the skills to make excellent music, we will be watching them to hear what else they can come up with next.

Release: March 27th, 2012

Country: Australia