This one could almost land in the progressive rock category. I think the balance is probably closer to the metal end, though. This has a lot in common with stuff like Dream Theater and Rush. It's a killer set of "thinking man's music." I'd love to hear more from these guys, as this is great.
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Track by Track Review
Deep In Space
There is a cool hard edged bluesy rocking sound to the opening here. The cut powers out to some soaring heavy metal from there. This still retains a lot of that old school hard rock sound, though. It gets quite ferocious and almost thrashing, though. There are things about this that make me think of acts like Dream Theater and Rush. In fact, there are times when you'd believe that Geddy Lee is singing on this. It's literally a screamer in places. This is ferocious and works really well. The cut drops back to a mellower movement later that's very much a prog kind of thing. The piece works through by revisiting earlier parts.
Ascending
This number comes in much mellower, with a bit of a spacey proggy texture.In fact, this cut really does land under the "prog" heading. It's still got some moody metal built into it, but it's mellower and more ballad like. It feels like an introductory piece for the next song.
Hades Heart This comes in with some serious epic metal. It drops to a more melodic movement that has a cool timing. The arrangement on this is fairly diverse and dynamic. While this is decidedly on the metal side of the equation, there is definitely a healthy dosage of prog here.
Over 50 Years For some reason at the start of this, I'm reminded by AC/DC's "Thunderstruck." That said, this is more technical than that. After that introduction it turns to a jam that's oddly (in a good way) timed and has some really heavy sound built into it. When it works toward the vocal movement I'm reminded a bit of the metal side of Queensryche. It gets quite extreme in some of the later sections. Yet, they also move into rather proggy territory at times.
Odyssey In a lot of ways this makes me think of the kind of epics Rush did in the prog era of the band. It has that kind of balance between mellower and heavier stuff. The musicianship level is similar, too. This gets a lot heavier than that, though. In some ways it makes me think of "Natural Science" or "Jacob's Ladder." Yet, it also has some definite Dream Theater like tendencies. It's a powerful piece of music with a lot of contrast built into it. There are sound effects at the end, serving as the outro.
