CD

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.

Sufferion - Hamartia Of Prudence is the third full-length studio album by the Finnish melodic gothic doom band Silentium. It's both a concept album and a theatrical piece of music, produced by no one less than Tuomas Holopainen (Nightwish). The story is about two lovers, Antracon and Prudence, tempted and misleaded one after the other by the demon Scoria to give up their soul in exchange for eternity and salvation from pain and agony. A very sad love story indeed, partly spoken and partly sung.

Trip To Innerself by Siddhartha is the first progressive album from Turkey that I’ve ever heard. There are probably more progressive bands in Turkey, but if you realize that this cd was recorded in the summer of 1998 and mastered in New York some ten years later, you may conclude that it wasn’t easy for Siddhartha to get their music released. Finally, a new American label decided to take a chance.

Though bearing different names like Trojan, these five people now known as Shy are very experienced musicians. Their first record was Once Bitten, Twice Shy recorded in 1983. The band toured with Twelfth Night, Magnum and Queensrÿche, just to name a few. The founder members are vocalist Tony Mills and guitarist Steve Harris, who wrote practically all the music on Sunset And Vine.

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.