FRAMESHIFT

Prog Rock 3/5 Likability 4/5

"Above The Grass-Part 1" is a short intro of nature sounds, strummed guitar and reserved vocals. "The Gene Machine" sounds good early but then it settles as the vocals arrive. Contrasts continue. "Spiders" isn't good at all. James is almost rapping early on with this funky rhythm. It changes some but the damage is already done. "River Out Of Eden" sounds good instrumentally but it calms right down when the reserved vocals arrive. Some nice guitar after 4 minutes. "Message From The Mountain" opens with piano as guitar joins in then bass as it builds. It goes from mellow to fairly bombastic. "Your Eyes" is a folky tune. "La Mer" opens with piano and fragile vocals.Yikes. Not a fan. "Nice Guys Finish First" is worse. Uptempo with organ early. Man I don't like this tune.

"Arms Races" is much better as it turns quite heavy duty with processed vocals joining in. Unfortunately it changes to a lighter sound, although the contrasts do continue. "Orgins And Miracles" is beautiful to start but i'm not a fan of the rest. "Off The Ground" opens with organ followed by some ripping guitar. Nice. Vocals before 1 1/2 minutes. I like the sound before 3 1/2 minutes. "Walking Through Genetic Space" is vocals only to open. It then calms right down with reserved vocals, light drums,bass and guitar. "Cultural Genetics" is cool sounding early on instrumentally. Processed vocals then it kicks in heavily. It doesn't keep going though sadly. A patchy song at best. "Bats" is atmospheric early on. I like it. It changes for the worse though when the vocals arrive. "Above The Grass-Part 2" ends this album much like it began.

Poor is the word that comes to mind, and to have almost 80 minutes of it is a tough pill to swallow. Fans of LaBrie or Dawkins might be intererested.

While I am a fan of just about everything presented here, I will say its not without its problems. First off, it's too long, and one or two of the songs get skipped regularily when they come up on my iPod. Moreover, Pauly's heavy playing is grating and not very interesting, coming across as a repetative, bland crunching where more intersting passages are called for in the gaps between LaBrie's singing.

However, the album as a whole has a nice, crisp sound which really shines on the more mellow songs and on the few with big, chrous driven sing-alongs. Pauly's use of synth, effects and keyboards are well placed, creating lots of different moods and themes.

Recommended for fans of LaBrie and anyone that reads Dawkins-- who will probably like this album regardless their musical tastes!

Songwriting: 3 Instrumental Performances: 3 Lyrics/Vocals: 3 Style/Emotion/Replay: 2

So I got stuck with this unwanted piece of metal in my deck, and instead of popping it out and return to the library and make Marcel swallow it, I decided to use this piece of junk (mostly and solely because of that brain-dead Seb's presence on it) to get one more review ahead of my other buddy Eric. I wonder how that hairspray-puffed poof foul-mouthed idiotic "singer" managed to get into a progmetal album that should be well beyond his poor scope of comprehension. That mystery got resolved by looking at the credits; he only participated (very partially, most likely: maybe just two or three aligned words) to the lyrics of two tracks and nothing else. He just sang, which pauses another problem: how did he manage to rerad the lyrics. I think Gordon (the conceptor of the concept) and Pauly (the musical kingpin of the project) resolved that by doing an abject subject that was susceptible to interest whatever braincells still alive in Seb's dead brain. So the concept is rather idiotic, dealing with serial murders, school violence, impulse killers, torture, rape and other joyous recommendable subjects: as you can see, right up idiotic Seb Bach's alley.

As to the music itself, this kind of crap holds absolutely NOTHING prog whatsoever, even if it tries (and fails) a bit with choirs, concept and other gadgets, which become ridiculous on this kind of album. Musically the album is not bad, somewhere between the hair metal of Motley Crue, skidding towards mid-Metallica, oogling early Dream Theater and drooling to Queensryche (add the "¨" where you please ;-). It would seem to me that metal has moved on since the late 80's, but maybe that's just me. So to fool progheads, in order to get some kind of sales, the writing team decided to breakdown rapes, tortures and murders into two phases, the perpetrator/predator (the doer for Seb's comprehension) and the victim (the enjoyer for Seb's comprehension). How so very cool, clever, thoughtful and bright!!! How did I not think of that??? What is this piece of crap doing on such a site of ours?

This is exactly the type of album that the Mothers Of Prevention were having a case for, and unfortunately on favoured Frank did not see the day to see such abomination claiming the right of free speech. ***at the asking of a few members, a few sentences about to whom this album might appeal to were edited by the review's author***

An abject piece of crap.

PS: this review was written a few days before the Virginia Tech massacre and posted in the Archives without the writer's knowledge of it, so he makes no links between the album and the the event, but cannot help but thinking that such subject should certainly be dealt with much greater care than Mr Pauly did.

Most people focus on LaBrie's participation in this project, and due to that expect music in the same vein as Dream Theater.

But what is on display here isn't someone trying to clone Dream Theater and getting LaBrie to sing the songs, rather it's an album of relatively diversified songs written to let a vocalist like LaBrie use his voice to the full extent.

So there's prog metal here, ballads, rockers and drifters - even some songs that sound more like ambient music than prog.

Songs that let LaBrie utilize his voice in as many aspects as he wants, and maybe even in some aspects that were unfamiliar for him.

And as much on this album is written for a vocalist of a certain type, if you like the music or not depends much on whether you like the vocalist that was chosen for the task.

Personally; I have a so-so thing with LaBrie as a vocalist; and would have loved listening to this album with a more restrained vocalist doing the singing here.

But it's LaBrie singing, and that affects strongly how much (or not) I like this release.

The driving, crunching guitars and pounding drums are solid but nothing all too spectacular. You'll really be impressed by the way Pauly uses almost techno like beats and sound effects on top of the heavy guitars to achieve a great atmosphere. Songs were this touch is missing are the weakest and act like sandbags to the albums rating. If Pauly were to take the obvious genre influences he has and explore them more fully instead of building a song around a primary metal riff this would be a far superior album. Still should pleasently excite prog metal fans and those who don't mind a harder edge.

This is one of those albums that you don't give too much credit to the first couple of times you hear it through. But after that, it gets better and better. I've listened to a lot of albums this year, and this is one of the best.

That being said, the music is exceptional here. First of all, Sebastian Bach (former pop/rock band Skid Row's lead singer) does an exceptional job on this one. Clear voice, nice soft passages and loads of aggressiveness when needed. I didn't know Henning Pauly before this album, as this was my first encounter with Frameshift, and he made a really good impression as a composer. Loads of guitar, very good keyboards and some interesting electronic effects. But don't let this last item discourage you: the effects are very well used and add interesting elements to the songs.

Frameshift took a heavier and darker turn on this album, in comparison to their Debut "Unweaving the Rainbow", which featured James Labrie (Dream Theater) on lead vocals. The lyrical content deals with the darker side of human emotion, such as pain and suffering, but at the same time questioning the nature of theses feelings. My favourite songs are "Human Grain", a fast paced song with great guitars and a huge chorus, "Push the Button", and, the closing piece, "What Kind of Animal". "Belíssimo", Bach.

One of the best albums I've listened to this year. A must have for prog metal fans, and for all other prog fans who have an inquisitive taste and don't limit themselves to one niche in the progressive genre. Go get it!