Sorry for taking over a year to finally review this and do a write up
Jingle.boyReflections of a Corrupted SoulEchoes – Epilogue (...is Where We Start)
Serious Black – I Seek No Other Life
Heaven Below – Nefarious Angels
Defecto – When Daylight Dies
Glass Mind – Crepusculum Vehementis
Poverty's No Crime – Spiral of Fear
Pyramaze – The Journey
Sixx:A.M. – Prayers for the Damned
Soul Secret – Regrets
Anthriel – Guardian
Echoes – Rude Awakening
Serious Black – As Daylight Breaks
Ethernity – Interlude
The Chronicles Project – When Darkness Falls
Anthriel –Light Divine
Anthriel – Scent of Dawn
Anthriel – Promised Land
The Chronicles Project – The Last Embrace
The Chronicles Project – Interlude I: The Confession
Absolute Priority – Dead Man Walking
Echoes – Prologue (Where We End...)First Impression - Epic storytelling and fitting song choice, but perhaps longer than it needs to be.This concept album is long and ambitious....and full of Power Metal, Prog Metal, and Heavy Metal. Having a somewhat narrow range of styles helps keep the album cohesive. I really liked your usage of the Interlude tracks throughout, it helped with the flow quite a bit (more on this in a bit) and essentially broke up the album in to distinct sections (not sure if that was intentional or not, but that's how it came across to me (going back and looking at your write up, yes this was intentional (reading, I need to learn that skill...))). I really like the idea of the Deus Ex concept, since I really like those games and the story you created actually works and was quite enjoyable, let's call it fan-fiction! Now, I think the best way to get my thoughts across on this is to go track by track, so let's do that...
Beginning with the Epilogue track works very well for me. I like the build up of adding more and more instruments until it explodes to life. This track is very dynamic for such a short intro track. At first the keyboards sounded a little too cheesy, but the more I listened to the album the more I liked it. Plus the rest of the instrumentation is great. This band Echoes knows how to play, that's for sure. This song flows in to I Seek No Other Life (when I say flow, I mean it could have flowed perfectly with a little editing magic, but I won't really count that against you), which is fairly straight forward Power Metal. It's still a solid song, if a tiny bit vanilla compared to a lot of the rest of the songs here. It does have Urban Breed, whose vocals I enjoy in Tad Morose and Trail of Murder. This flows really well in to the next song, Nefarious Angels. This is where the story really takes off, giving us some plot exposition. There are some technical problems that I have with this song, mostly in the production side. Which is a shame, because this song absolutely slays! The production isn't so bad that I can't overlook it though. I love the various twists and turns this song goes through. The choir vocals (keyboards?) work really well too. I've never heard of this band before, but now I think I need to get this album. I like the transition between this song and the next, When Daylight Dies. This song unfortunately kind of falls in to the Cloudscape/Evergrey snoozefest category. It does work for getting more of the story across, so + points there. Crepusculum Vehementis kind of works as an interlude/bridge to another section of the story/album. You kind of brought this out in your write up with it signifying the passing of several years. It's a fairly standard Prog Metal instrumental, that I find fairly enjoyable, with enough interesting happening that it doesn't lose my interest. There's a lot of cool basslines and riffs going on here. Although the end goes in to full Dream Theater rip off mode
. Spiral of Fear being next and almost feels a centerpiece for the whole album. This song has a great progression and great sound. It almost sounds like Falling Into Infinity era production with Awake/A Change of Seasons creativity. Long story short, I like this song. I like how it fits in the story. The Journey, oh my do I hate the way that opening riffs sounds. That buzzy sound, it's awful. The rest of the song is more tolerable, but not great. I really didn't like Pyramaze's latest album and this song is not making me want to go back and listen to their other albums. I actually liked Prayers for the Damned a lot more than I thought I would at least the music and the lyrics are very fitting for the story. The vocals aren't as good, at least to my ears. TASTES! Regrets by Soul Secret is next. This is a band I'm somewhat familiar with. I loved their Closer to Daylight album and then my soul was utterly crushed at how bad Babel was, but I digress. This song probably works better within the album it's on. The vocals don't really work for me here and the pacing/timing/harmonies are all very awkward sounding
There's another sort of rough transition here to Guardian, but nevermind that. I love the way this song starts. However, this band, Anthriel, butts up very close to Cloudscape territory. The band in actuality is actually quite listenable and stays on the correct side of the boring|not-boring scale, if just barely. This is what I imagine Cloudscape could sound if they actually had good songwriting skills. I do like this song as the beginning of the final chapter of the story. And boy that was an inspired transition to the next song Rude Awakening. It may be in a different key, but it almost sounds intentional. I'm glad you included another Echoes song, this time with vocals, it makes it easier to truly evaluate the band. I think I really need to check out this band. They have a fairly unique sound for a Prog Metal band. The transition to As Daylight Breaks could be amazing with a little editing. This song is much better than the other Serious Black song on here. Maybe because I'm a sucker for well executed power ballads or maybe it's just a good song (it's both). This song flows right into the Interlude by Ethernity which is good for more story exposition with some spoken dialogue. When Darkness Falls is a fairly bombastic Power Metal tune with lots of keyboards and multiple vocalists. Everything here is good, if not great. Although I could see myself getting tired of an entire album like this, but it works well here. I feel I'm just moving away from music like this more and more. This is more of a me problem than this particular style of music's problem.
The rest of this album I feel I need to take as a whole. From Light Divine through Prologue (Where We End...), this is where I feel the story is the strongest, not that it wasn't strong overall, but one is bound to enjoy one section of any given medium of entertainment more than other parts. It's the nature of the beast. I absolutely love the choice of songs for the ending of this album. The lyrics/spoken word dialogue really paint a vivid picture of what's happening in the story. Plus the music is all really top notch from here on out too. This section is among the most inspired of all the roulette EP's and Concept Albums I've received. So hats off to you for that. There are so many cool little sections throughout this part of the album. The awesome riffing in Promised Land. The atmosphere and brilliant use of spoken word dialogue of the 2 Chronicles Project songs and the epic "false ending" with Dead Man Walking. I could go on and on about awesome musical bits here.
The flow here is really good, despite not doing any editing. There are a few awkward cuts between songs, but that's to be expected when using different artists throughout. Sure editing would have made it flow better, but it still seems like you took your time trying to find a sequence that would work best. The story here also helps a ton with flow. It's well thought out and well executed. Every song here has a purpose. Sure, the album could have been shortened a bit, but the more I think about it, that might have been to its detriment.
Overall I really enjoyed this album. There were a few songs I didn't truly enjoy musically, but lyrically they were there for a reason.
You get a score of 86 Schrute Bucks!
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