SPACE PIRATES

RAZA is DR. RAZA an entirely self-taught keyboardist from Toronto, Canada. On his first albums, he shows his virtuoso talents and plays his instruments with a furious passion. The music covers the symphonic, ambient, and metal genres especially the latter with more guitars. Lately, RAZA is inspired by prog-metal bands which can explain the new direction his music has taken. We can also see someone devoted to his work in his elaborate descriptions of the concepts behind his albums.

This last album has that prog-metal virtuosity and pace, but the melody comes more from the keyboards than the guitars. It sounds like a Dream Theater instrumental style led by Raza's heroic on the keyboards. The dark nature of the album has a lot of similarities with the music of another heavy prog artist in the name of Jason Rubenstein. The heaviness comes from the keyboards, which led to plenty of soloing, but Raza keeps a strong melodic content in his songs. The 3-part Nebula track has some classical arrangements to give this music a bit of grandeur. The second part is a cool interlude that calms things down before the music comes to its frenetic pace. Then we are treated to another keyboard solo in Jordan Rudess's style. "Nautilus" has the best drum intro before the keys get loose again in a bombastic mood. "Heroes Fanfare" is a song with that classical atmosphere, a nice arrangement of recorded violin and drums. 4 stars for sure