THE ODYSSEY

I am a huge dream theater fan and i will overlook the fact that this band are practically clones of dream theater and have to many "similarities" that its just silly. But that aside, The Odyssey is an original and strong set of songs. The vocals, i agree, are very over the top at times but it seems to fit with their style of music, making everything about them seem evil. His voice is pretty similar to dream theater yet unique with his own styles. The lyrics are more supernatural and fantasy based than dream theater, giving the album an evil edge but it would be nicer to see real life situations being tackled here.

"Inferno" is a beast of an opening track with the incredibly speedy guitar riffs, gruff vocals and metal harmony. The album starts to mellow a little bit with the similar flow on "Wicked" but the album starts heading in a different direction when it reaches "Incantations of the Apprentice". "Accolade II" is the first song that really pushes the keyboard skills and it serves as an excellent sidekick to the guitar riffs and solos. This is probably the most sorrowful song on the album which slightly gives the album a bit of balance and variety. The odyssey's main purpose though is to provide pure progressive metal which it does well, whilst dream theater like to experiment on each album, which goes down better with most people. "King of Terrors" is a brilliant way of kicking off the second half of the album, with its evil piano pieces and bold guitar riffage. "The Turning" keeps the solid flow going but it starts to feel a little more repititive and less impressive, although this is a great song. "Awakenings" is much better and begins to blend mellow and heavy pieces together. The vocals here are at their best on the whole album (probably because they aren't as majestic and dramatic). "The Odyssey" is one of the most impressive suites i have heard because it manages to pull the listener in right away where as most suites require patience as they gradually build up to better things (eg. "Atom Heart Mother", "And You And I", "Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence"). This song unexplainable manages to have a Greek feel to it which fits in perfectly with its Greek god odyssey concept. This album probably manages to go down well with Dream Theater fans, despite the large array of annoying borrowed and unoriginal similarities. Still i would recomend "Images and Words" and "Awake" first because Symphony x are just re-inventing Dream Theaters created sound.