HARMAGEDON

Jordan Rudess and Derek Sherinian, Neal Morse and Alex Argento on keyboards who are on the same album! With drummer Collin who played on Neal Morse's albums, anything goes since we also have Ted Leonard; in short, a great group of musicians including Daniel Fries on guitar, a fervent admirer of the DREAM THEATER guitarist. How does listening to this album go?

1. Overture pt.1: Superb introduction, progressive, latent, ambient, symphonic, inaugural and almost perfect in fact 2. Overture pt.2: Prologue to set up the different keyboards close to each other without clashing, but magnifying their presence; it works well and creates the desire to go further 3. Salvation with a riff worthy of IRON MAIDEN and a magnificent, very spirited finale; the sound is set up and shows the mastery of the musicians 4. The Rapture for one of the 2 big titles with heavy riffs and guitar battles with synths for the melodic prog metal energy; very good, very long and difficult to pin down, be careful!

5. Cry Song in radio edit and Ted's always captivating voice which immediately recalls the marvelous of ENCHANT; for his acoustic solo too 6. Falling Away & The Rise Of The Beast for Collin's drums which hit faster than him, ah no that's Lucky Luke; in short synth solos galore and an instrumental mastery to make any other keyboard pale 7. Harmagedon for the eponymous title, the 2nd long one, perhaps a little weariness which is starting to show; however in terms of synth solo it is always extreme power by igniting the title in high notes, in velvet, in F B C and in dexterity; to scare away this repetition, jazzy mix with melodic metal typified on reminiscences of the melodic prog metal groups of the 90s; otherwise the biblical, religious part denotes a little with this fervor of notes and a synth solo that DREAM Dream Theater could have played, yes DREAM THEATER had and still has very good keyboard players in its midst 8. New Jerusalem for its intro flirting a lot with one of... DREAM THEATER; after that it is the voice in front for the saving rhythmic ballad which takes up the clichés and which ends up wearing out the ears and the concentration a little after more than an hour of high-flying sounds, pleasant but with the feeling of repetition at the end. Too bad because the solos are always very melodic. (3.5)