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The Swedish prog metal outfit Seventh Wonder offers their fourth release with The Great Escape. Finally I managed to focus my interest on this five piece. What an incredible band they are! Superb mastering of instruments and a really good vocalist, a pretty unique combination, yet a very powerful one. I will have to do some catching up on their previous albums. On the new album, the band takes their progressive influences even further by including an epic.

Destination: Alive by the Swedish band Seven Wishes is classified as hard rock, but AOR or melodic metal could easily have been a correct description as well. The band went through a lot of troubles, line-up changes and haircuts to achieve their goal, which was to survive and make another solid album.

In de nog steeds toenemende stroom van neoklassieke progmetal heb ik een nieuwe naam ontdekt: Seven Seraphim. Dit Amerikaanse kwartet, onder aanvoering van de nieuwe gitaargod Andrew Szucs, maakt muziek die voornamelijk lijkt te zijn ingegeven door Yngwie Malmsteen en in mindere mate door Rainbow. De achtergrondinformatie is zeer beperkt en de band heeft kennelijk ook nog geen eigen website.

SBB are the godfathers of Polish progressive rock music and most prog heads know this band at least by name. Almost forty years in the business, bass player, keyboardist and singer Józef Skrzek and guitarist-keyboardist Apostolis Anthimos are still from the original line-up. Between the two of them all keyboard duties are divided. Drummer Gabor Nemeth completes the current line-up.

Drummer Wojtek Szadkowski is the mastermind of the Polish band Satellite. He also used to play an important role in his former band Collage. Nostalgia is the fourth album by Satellite. It is the successor of the recommended album Into The NIght (2007).

Janet Robbins belongs to the category of intriguing musicians you can’t put a definitive label on. Influenced by a wide range of musicians like Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel - just to name a few - and undoubtedly her father Marty Robbins. He probably has stimulated her to pick up a guitar. Robbins creates a musical style ranging from ambient to minimal music and from new age to slightly symphonic.

We have a new musical genre here! It’s called gospel progressive metal, but you probably think: I’ve heard music in the same vein before (Kerry Livgren’s AD perhaps?) and you are probably right. From my point of view, Revelation Project is the first release I came across, that tries to combine ‘spreading the gospel’ on music we could easily classify as progressive rock, although sometimes it sounds more like melodic metal and also some beautiful symphonic pieces like Promise have been included.

The American hard rock or melodic metal outfit Queensrÿche needs no introduction. Their magnum opus Operation: Mindcrime (1988) is a very popular album amongst both hard rock fans and fans of progressive rock music with a harder edge. This time Geoff Tate and his bandmates got their inspiration from Tate's father who used to be a professional military man. As many of them, who witnessed the horrors of war, he never opened up to his son Geoff until a few years ago.

Product is a Los Angeles based American duo consisting of Arman Christoff Boyles (vocals, keyboards, guitars) and Scott Rader (drums, bass, background vocals). With Earth (2008) they complete their quadrilogy on the four elements: On Water (2000), Aire (2003) and The Fire (2005). The lyrics are inspired by the life of Nikola Tesla, a scientist who played an important role in the development of transmissible energy (AC current). Tesla came to New York as a foreigner.

The history from Praying Mantis goes back to 1977 when the Spanish-Greek brothers Tino Troy (guitar, vocals, keyboards) and Chris Troy (bass, guitar, vocals, keyboards) founded the band. From 1990 Dennis Stratton (ex-Iron Maiden, guitar, vocals) is considered to be a full member of the band as well. As a successor to the commercially succesful album Nowhere To Hide (2000) the decision was made to use different vocalists.