DIVIDED

Dutch metal band Lemur Voice is one of the few with a progressive nature. At least I wanted to check out one of their releases as true Dutch progger and of course fan of progressive metal in general. I picked out this one because it contained quite a lot of tracks, a few really long too. One of the significant features of Lemur Voice is the guy responsible for the "Lemur Voices" as they put it in the booklet: Gregoor van der Loo. A man with a striking voice, quite high in fact and I wonder if he would be in place in the heavy metal scene as a vocalist. Probably a useless question because he and his band are in the progressive metal world and that's simply not the same. The style of playing is metal-like but not of the toughest sort. When they play rough occasionally it's not for an entire song, just a part of it. It produces a differentiated image for this band and in fact I like that. This aspect comes to full expression in their almost funny cover of Beat it (Michael Jackson). When I realized they were really covering this song I could hardly believe it. On itself I'm not a fan of covers and neither of Michael Jackson but I must admit they did a very nice job here, giving the song a whole new appearance. In the second half of the song they even play it jazzy and it sounds very much ok too. Can you believe it ? But of course it's not the very highlight of the album, that wouldn't be a good sign.

Best tracks to me are Childhood facade and When the cradle cries both really well executed. Besides the last track there are no poor or even moderate songs on this album. So that's a big plus and leaves us with over 70 minutes of enjoyment listening to this album. This conclusion is good enough for 4 stars I believe.