On dark days, I may have gloomy thoughts  – which I later mostly regret. Never were they as dark and gloomy though as the experiences that led Amadeus Awad to compose, record and release Death is Just a Feeling. Inspired, if that is the right word here, by the loss of loved ones, and a failed suicide attempt, this album is a new addition to the list of cinematic concept albums. Albums that require one to sit down and listen, and to feel. Think of well known titles like Pink Floyd’s  The Wall, or The Human Equation by Ayreon, where that applies as well. [acfw id=2]

Each track on this album fills a piece of a puzzle, that, once complete leads to the realisation, waking up after a failed suicide attempt, that

“…what I killed last night wasn’t my flesh, but my connection to the surreal skies I roamed in since the creation of the universe. I was already dead when you touched my face, death is just a feeling.”

The album consists of 6 tracks only, and it lasts just over 45 minutes, but it appears longer when listening. The story is carried by voices as well as music. Narratives by Dan Harper, with a low, hypnotic voice, are interleaved with angelic, and sometimes anxious vocals by Anneke van Gierbergen,the dramatic voice of Elia Monsef and the careful, almost shy sounds of Arjan Lucassen on the closing track. These voices are surrounded by music that is an eclectic mix of metal and heavy symphonic rock that is carrying the different moods of despair, grief and wonder. The acoustic opening track, with Anneke singing as an angel is one end of the musical spectrum, while the central piece of the album, Lonesome Clown takes us through metal, heavy rock and wailing keyboard music. This track is a 12 minute musical masterpiece, that would easily have fit on any Ayreon album. Actually, the presence of both Arjan ‘Ayreon’ Lucassen and Anneke van Giersbergen makes one wonder sometimes if this is an Ayreon album, but the music still different from what Arjan Lucassen has done.

Highlights of the album for me, besides Lonesome Clown, are the emotion filled guitar solos on Tomorrow Lies (which also include a great use of cello) and Temporary, and the way Monday Morning musically expresses the feeling of remembering a final goodbye. A final goodbye from a love one, who gets killed in an explosion shortly after.

The sound and production of the album are very full, because of the continuous presence of synths and keyboards in the back. That makes it somewhat loud, but never in a disturbing way – and even the clarinet on Temporary is able to come out front and center.

Despite it’s dark nature, this is amongst the best albums released this year (I skipped over a few planned reviews to write this one today). Highly recommended, certainly for those who like musical adventures akin to what the people involved in making this album normally deliver. It’s a work of art,  and I could easily see someone making a short, very dark movie to this album, to complete the package.

Today I had a discussion with a friend on how people listen to music. There’s a lot of rock and metal music being released under the moniker ‘progressive’. Regardless of how fitting that moniker is (complexity and experimentation does not always mean that the music is ‘progressing’, pushing forward the boundaries of music), it’s a fact that a lot of this music is not something you grab on first listen. It takes at least a bit of time and effort to get into it, to give it proper listen and let it sink in. This is no different with the album All is not for All, released a few months ago by Anuryzm, a metal outfit hailing from the United Arab Emirates. [acfw id=2]

Anuryzm is headed by guitarist John Bakhos, and is the spin off of a cooperation he started in Lebanon in 2003. After moving around the world a few times and working with various people, he found a stable line up, which released Worm’s View in 2011. That album introduces Worm, a character that returns in the well executed artwork of the new album All is not for All as well. He seems to signify everything that modern man stands for, including all the mistakes we make and the risks we run. That, combined with lyrics, which deal with topics like nanotechnology, illness, extraterrestrial encounters and many others sets a bit of a gloomy story behind the album – “a warning to both the “Worm” and mankind to figure out their priorities and may the better side win.”

A somewhat disturbing message, but looking at the world today, one vested firmly in reality.  A complex reality, which leads to lyrics that require proper reading in the context of the above message in order to grasp them, and music that fits with it.

Now, that may come across as pompous or bombastic, which is not my intention, so lets put our feet back no the ground and look at the music on this album. Aneurysm can be found on the web described as power metal as well as thrash metal. Neither does full justice to the music, which is a blend of various things found in the different kinds of metal music around.

The opening track Mineral isn’t metal at all – it’s low power, melodic, with a very well played bass line (by Michael LePond of Symphony X) and powerful but melodic vocals by Nadeem Bibby. The big surprise is the in your face metal guitar riff that immediately follows it, the opening of Full Agonist. That track is a fast, driven metal track, where vocalist Nadeem shows that he can sing, scream and growl and switch between the three effortlessly. Sometimes he sounds like Russel Allen, at other times a more powerful version of James Hetfield.

This continues on in heavy, full metal tracks like Humanoid, but further down the road we encounter more quiet and melodic passages again. The opening of Depolarized is a good example of that. Guitar and keys put down a melody, accompanied by a slightly clattering bass and relaxed vocals, then it builds up into a full metal wall, without losing the underlying melody completely.

Stand out tracks besides these examples for me are The Challenge and 199x, and Oceans Apart. The Challenge is lead by a fast guitar riff and a pulsing double bass drum (Charley Zeleny knows his stuff) after the heartbeat used as intro, that speeds up quickly but always keeps a keyboard melody (Uri Dijk, known from Textures) underneath. After a quiet midsection, the metal march continues and the keyboards have the last word. 199x is the track with most tempo and rhythm changes on the album (I think). The guitar riff is relatively fast, but the drums and synths unadorned give it a slow doom feel at the same time. The melodic midsection is very quiet compared to the rest of the track, and builds up to the metal crescendo ending again. Oceans Apart finally, is a rather melodic and low power instrumental, with orchestral strings (by guest artist Christopher Chaplin) and a fitting guitar solo – an island of peace on this powerful album.

Production wise, like with the artwork, Anuryzm has done a great job as well. With the blasting metal power of the guitars as a basis, it’s not an easy job to make all the instruments have their way, yet John Bakhos and Miltiadis Nicolaos Kyvernitis pulled it off. This is the second album this year I encounter that has a dynamic range of 12 or above – not a measure for production quality, but it does show that the dynamics in the music have survived mixing and mastering.

So, all in all, after taking my time to get used to it, this album is definitely one I recommend to check out if you like what is monikered ‘progressive metal’. Don’t expect the melodies and shredding of Dream Theater, nor the mathematical metal of Exivious or Cynic. This band is somewhere in between, in their own spot.

Science fiction, something I like a lot when I was a teenager, and that can still get my attention when I run into a good movie or book. Apparently, I should add music album to that list as well – given this new release by Gekko Projekt.
With Reya of Titan they have released a concept album that tells the story of Reya, a space miner who ends up becoming the queen of Saturn’s moon Titan. The lyrics tell the story, not just the facts but also the emotions, and the music adds to that. Did I just define again what a concept album is…? [acfw id=2]

Gekko Projekt consists of Peter Matuchniak  on guitar, Vance Gloster (keyboards), Rick Meadows (bass) and Alan Smith (drums). These four, all of whom have been around in the music scene for many years, founded the band in 2010 and released their debut album Electric Forest in 2012. For this new album, Rey of Titan, they joined hands with female vocalist JoJo Razor, with wonderful results. The four men each take their share of the male vocals on the album, but it’s JoJo’s voice that makes me shiver in combination with the four men behind her doing what they do best – play their instruments.

The music is a mix of styles that may be encountered in other places, but never in this exact way. The bass that reminds sometimes of early Rush but with a jazzy feel where needed, while the guitar has influence of Steve Hackett as well as many a jazz rock guitarist (which I also heard on Peter Matuchniak’s solo album Product). The keyboards switch seamlessly between eighties neo prog, but also reach back into the keyboard walls of the 70s and drums that keep everything in line but add to the music at the same time.

This may sound chaotic, but all of this is very well distributed over the 13 tracks that make up the album, from the filmic Snow White and Grains of Sand – which tell of Reya’s trip to the asteroids for mining and the accident that gets her to go into her freezer pod, via the slightly more up tempo North of Titan, which has a great jazzy instrumental section, to the full blown slightly staccato jazz rock track Frienda, that would only be better if the brass in the intro hadn’t come from a synth. In a way, although I don’t like such comparisons, it reminds me a little bit of Gong.

After that, This is now our Home is a full blown symphonic rock epic – with quiet parts, 70s wailing keyboards and guitar interplay and once again that jazzy jazz rock instrumental that somehow puts a signature on the album for me. These two tracks combined, Frienda and This is now our Home, are the best part of the album for me.

The tracks that follow tell the story of what happens on Titan, after Reya has lived there for 24 years. When help finally arrives for her and the people that rescued her in the end, she decides to stay on Titan and is crowned queen. All of this is told by the wonderful, slightly Middle Eastern sounding instrumental 24 years in Solitude, the rocking and varied Queen of Titan and the heavy pulsing Escape from the mines of Titan. The album ends with Reya’s favourite song from earth being played on Titan radio, Sing for Me. A surprising, somewhat weird track, with a surf guitar (?) opening and a rock ‘n roll like bass line that move into a more punctuated almost-but-not-quite-sixties pop song. Perhaps one day a real Reya will indeed request this Gekko Projekt track on space radio while flying to her next asteroid to mine. I’d recommend she requests the full album to be played.

I intended to wait with this review until the vinyl was out, but that would take too long now that it’s postponed (although only by a week) – the world needs to know all there is to know about this album, now. If only because I just started a new love affair – with Echolyn.

Echolyn have been around for over 25 years if we count from their founding in 1989. The current line up has only been in effect since 2003 when bass player Tom Hyatt formally joined the band, joining the other members who had been there from the start. [acfw id=2]

Now 25 years together, with only the bass player replaced has made Echolyn a stable force when it comes to composing their music. [Note: the bio I used as input for this intro contains a small flaw. Tom was in the band earlier from 1990-1995, so he didn’t join in 2003, but rather rejoined. – AH]

I’m always careful with comparisons, but the influences the band themselves have indicated multiple times (including Genesis, Jethro Tull and Steely Dan and Gentle Giant) are clearly present here. The melodies of the first, the folky style and guitar of the second and third and the intricate vocal harmonies of the latter can all be found here, but never in a copy cat way. Actually, when I listened to the album, before diving into the history and background of the band, I heard symphonic rock, folk and rock ‘n roll in it – which confirms the influences from where I’m standing.

The music of Echolyn is a mix of all the above, and the 9 tracks on this album provide them in different mixes – here’s a selection to give you an idea.

Where Messenger of All’s Right builds up from a soft piano based melody to a complex folk inspired rock song, Warjazz is indeed what the title suggests: a mix of symphonic rock with jazz rock influences and numerous changes in tempo and orchestration (if I may use that word). Empyrean Views has a familiar sounding (folky) guitar signature, that I’ve been trying to map to something I know for a month now, without much success, combined with intricate vocal harmonies.

The band is also not afraid to go full on, in the intro and outro of Different Days, or on Vanishing Sun (Tom Hyatt knows how to make a bass really growl there!). And then there is the somewhat funky, jazzy yet rocking Once I get Mine, with a fitting, funny 50s rock ‘n roll guitar sound built in.

The only track I may not appreciate to the fullest yet is Carried Home, which has a slightly electronic 80s feel to it. That’s not entirely my thing, and it is different from the rest of the album, but it’s executed well nevertheless.

Lyrically, a story can be made up with every song, just listen – read the lyrics and think of what they are about. Songs that tell a story, although sometimes with a little bit too much trying to make things rhyme (Empyrian Views – “They found the steppe and sang it’s song, some settled in or just moved along”), some make you wonder what their meaning is (Messenger of All’s Right – “The rumble would decay when the needle hit the groove to build the silence”). They make me think and wonder…

Production wise, the album must have been challenging – with all the keyboard and vocal melodies going on, the bass sometimes drowns a bit, but overall the sounds are clear and well balanced.

An album full of surprises, every time I hear different things – and it doesn’t bore me for a second. Can’t wait for the vinyl version to come in…