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The seventh studio album by the superb Canadian heavy but progressively rocking trio The Tea Party was released late September 2004. Jeff Martin (vocals, guitar), Stuart Chatwood (bass, keyboards) and Jeff Burrows (drums) had a break for nearly four years. Now, they're back with Seven Circles, an excellent album full of rich melodies, atmosphere, melancholy, lots of power, really nice hooks and extremely solid compositions.

TCP (Temporal Chaos Project) is a project by three American musicians, namely Initiator Blake Tobias (keyboards, programming, bass), Jack Wright (guitars, drums) and Henry Tarrnecky (vocals, lyrics). A number of guests participate on Mellotron, guitar, bass and drums to make the sound even more powerful and varied. The production duties were done by Tobias, who really did a good job.

Talisman is geen onbekende band in het AOR- en melodische metalgenre. De band rond de bandleden van Yngwie Malmsteen's Rising Force bestaat uit Marcel Jacob (bas), Jeff Scott Soto (zang), Fredrik Akesson (gitaar) en Jamie Borger (drums). De laatste twee zijn beiden ook al actief op diverse oudere albums van Talisman. Na het wat tegenvallende album Truth (1998) is Talisman nu terug met Cats And Dogs.

After many line-up changes since their debut in 1993, the American hard rock band Takara are back with Invitation To Forever, their fifth studio album. Guitarist Neil Grusky succeeded in putting together a new line-up consisting of Björn Englen (bass) and Patrick Johansson (drums), both of Yngwie Malmsteen fame. As a vocalist he enlisted Gustavo Monsanto (ex-Adagio) from Brazil. He completed the current line-up with keyboardist Brook Hansen.

Syzygy is a four piece from Ohio (USA), led by guitarist and leadvocalist Carl Baldasarre. Together with keyboardist Sam Giunta and bassist Al Rolik these friends were in a band called Abraxas - not to be confused with the Polish band with the same name - touring extensively during the seventies but they mainly played covers. This band disbanded in 1983.

String Cheese Incident (SCI) is another band signed by the InsideOut Music-label from the so called Jam Rock scene, just like Umphrey's McGee, but the music of SCI contains much more influences of Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Their music is fairly mellow and also influences of folk music can be distinguished. All and all One Step Closer sounds pretty dreamy to me. It lacks balls and most certainly the expected progressive touch as with Umphrey’s McGee.

Stream Of Passion (SoP) used to be an international band, founded by Arjen Lucassen (Ayreon). After their debut Embrace The Storm and a live album/DVD, Arjen Lucassen, guitarist Lori Linstruth and keyboardist Alejandro Milan left the band, leaving vocalist-violinist Marcella Bovio (Mexico), bass player Johan van Stratum and drummer Davy Mickers - both from the Netherlands - with a dilemma: to go on or to break up.

Strawberry Fields is one of the many projects by the Polish musician Wojtek Szadkowski, who is especially known for his work with Collage and Satellite. Another of his projects is Peter Pan. Robin, the beautiful singer in Strawberry Fields happens to be the girlfriend of Peter Pan’s guitarist Radek Chwieralski and thus she became involved in this project.

Spektrum is a new all-star band from Sweden featuring Hansi Cross (Cross, guitars, keyboards), Olav Andersson (Grand Stand, keyboards, acoustic guitar, vocals), Göran Johnsson (Grand Stand, drums, vocals, guitar, keyboards), Göran Fors (Galleon, bass, Taurus pedals, vocals) and the female vocalist Lizette van Panajott.

Catchy choruses, up-tempo tunes, good, bright vocals by Jaap Warmenhoven and lots of nice hooks. Is Skip The Rush a progressive band? No, not really. Think of The Police for instance. These Dutch guys put a whole lot of energy into All Is Fit For Tonight and it reflects in their music equally. Their sound is quite ‘international’ and if they would have been British or American, they would probably have had a major contract.