Perhaps this isn’t the tightest fit under prog. In fact, I know it isn’t. However, I think it fits well enough. This is more guitar hero type stuff. It goes from metallic to riff rocking, proggy and more. The whole instrumental quality of the release helps to make it fit under progressive rock, too. The name of the project is the last name of the central musician, Michael Shouse. There are guest appearances here from Tony MacAlpine, Michael Angelo Gatto and Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal.

Symphonic keyboard sounds get us underway here. Neo-classical electric guitar joins and eventually turns toward shred as this instrumental introductory piece ends.

Fierce metal is on the menu here. The guitar soloing comes in after the riff based jam is well-established. This is very much a fiery guitar hero type rocker. It has some really impressive guitar work built into it, too. This gets shreddy before it’s over and done.

This lands sort of between neo-classical and fusion music. It has a sparse guitar based arrangement.

Now, this fires out into fierce, driving metal meets prog jamming. It evolves into a more melodic prog jam with some (I believe synthetic) non-lyrical vocals. We hear someone shout “Let’s Go” as the cut turns toward some metallic hard rocking jamming. That “Let’s Go” appears again a couple times later. This cut really is quite dynamic moving between proggy stuff, shred-based metal, more hard rocking stuff and other things. It’s one of my favorite things here. 

This thing has some smoking hot driving hard rocking stuff. It’s a killer guitar hero type number.

The guitar playing on this is scorching hot. I mean, you can say that about everything here, but for some reason it stands out even more here. This is a driving hard rocker that leans toward the metal end of things.

The title track lands more along the Joe Satriani lines. It’s another killer guitar dominated rocker.

With prominent piano, this slower, mellower and somber, is a little on the proggy side.

Somehow this reminds me a little of Trevor Rabin in some ways. The cut is a melodic rocker with definite hints of prog in the mix. It’s a classy way to end the set.