Tag Archives: prog metal

Reviews, Various

(record review)ENTROPY CODING-“Tales of the Moon”(Agoge Records)

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Entropy Coding is an Italian symphonic prog metal band and this is their new album out on Agoge Records, so it was about time to hear the album and review it in the zine.

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Entropy Coding was founded in 2015.by mastermind keyboardist and main composer Susanna Coltrè. She tried to combine power epic metal influences with symphonic elements and progressive metal and she made an interesting album on which she collaborated with 10 musicians, specialized in different musical genres.

The album contains a kind of intro and eight songs. After the intro “Once upon a time” I was not really happy with the opening track “Neon in the dark” because it gave me too plastic sound of the production like its lacking something in being alive but quite the contrary I found it to be too studio polished and sterile, both in song structure and production wise. Luckily the situation improved with next couple of songs especially with “Feel the air”, the single for which they made a nice lyric video which you can find below. The most beautiful song on this album for me is definitely “Luna” and its epicness, melody, sadness and beautiful keyboard and vocal lines put goosebumps on my skin and tears in my metal hardened eyes.

The musicianship on the album is really tight and although the production is somehow too plastic for me as I said before, this is quality and nice melodic metal for the fans of such music. I think that main goal of this album was to explore the boundaries of metal subgenres and they explored them well through and through. Interesting band, let us see what the future will bring for them.

7,5/10

https://www.facebook.com/EntropyCodingOfficial/

https://www.facebook.com/Agogerecords/

 

 

Reviews, Various

(album review)Poldur’s Gate Project-“Directions”

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Is there such thing as synthesized metal? Yes there is! This is the most unusual thing that I have listened to and reviewed for this zine.

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This is a one man solo vision of Luca Bussolini and it is a concept album featuring two characters called Hanako and Shin. The concept theme is looking for the new objectives and about the failures along the way which help us in understanding the trail of our lives.

What is so new and different? Well, all the music and vocals on this album are synthesized from software, there is no real musicians, singers in a classical sense of band. And it works! The music is melodic power prog metal with nice riffs, melodic guitar hooks and memorable tunes which caught me humming all the time. In my opinion, the only thing which needs to be worked on is that in some songs, the vocals are too monotone, meaning too same sounding. But, that is only my opinion. I must applaud to Luca for having a vision which carries a bit of controversy but is important. Top song on this album for me is “Time for a Will”-

7,5/10

Follow: https://www.facebook.com/poldursgateproject/

 

 

Reviews, Various

(record review)AKERCOCKE-“Renaissance in Extremis”(Peaceville)

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Its been exactly ten years since the last album and Akercocke just released a new album. What does the new album hold? Well,  the Brits got us exactly nine new songs, about 55 minutes long album.

Akercocke-RenaissanceCD

There are some albums that work fine for me, but there are also those that make me nervous and this one was one of such albums. In general, the problem with this album is that it is too progressive even for and the old scene purist in me just woke up from the deep slumber and made me dislike this record. Dont get me wrong, the musicianship on this album is superb, but there is just too much guitar solos and they continue for too long in some songs. Lyrics are great, I think the band kept their Satanic edge through all these years. You cant go wrong with song titles such as “First to Leave the Funeral”. Jason Mendonca provides vocals that are sometimes blackish, sometimes death growl and a lot of times clean with additional help of female vocals here and there. The song structures vary from aggressive blast beats to moody atmospheric parts, but there is just too many things in one song to make me like it. There are some nice parts, but too few for me. This one was just too prog for me!

4,5/10

https://www.facebook.com/akercockeofficial/

http://peaceville.com/bands/akercocke/