CD

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.

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.