LIQUID TENSION EXPERIMENT

This band and the album itself is the result of the combination of groovy, virtuosity and jamming at the same time. Although there are no vocals, which can be and feel weird for some people that are used to them, there is no need for them, the music and instruments express by themselves what they want to express, and they do it in a incredible way.

Let's start with the song that opens the album, Paradigm Shift. This song scared me the first time I listened it because it starts in a surprising and unexpected way, the start of this song makes you feel like you are in a circus where the function of it has just started. It goes from a 2 minutes intense rhythm where the drums, keyboard and guitar gets absolutely crazy to a heavy guitar solo and then to a heavy keyboard solo as well, it then changes to a slow and atmospheric part that sounds like a video game soundtrack where the bass is the protagonist until the guitar comes up with an incredible and at the same time melodic solo, after that it changes to an Arabian-like style of music part, and finally it ends the way it started, in a frenetic way. A really groovy song that has a bit of everything!

Osmosis, the second song of the CD is a completely different style of music than Paradigm Shift. It's a happy but at the same time a calm and ambient-like song, a thing that you would hear when you are in the beach, a very relaxing and cool song after the frenetic previous song.

The third song Kindred Spirits, starts with a heavy introduction with a rock-jazzy guitar riff, when we think it's a hard rock-like song it slowly turns into a melodic song where the keyboard and the guitar and the melody they transmit are the protagonists of this song.

The Stretch is a really jazzy based song, it feels so groovy and the rhythm they transmit make this song a very cool song, too bad it's a very short song! The bass, drums and keyboards are the leaders of this song, and they make a very good combination!

Freedom Of Speech. This song is 50% melody and 50% craziness. Amazing keyboard and guitar solos, a really cool drum section and an atmospheric build-up after that. The principal melody of this song is perfect, it's a really happy one and makes you really motivated for some reason, an excellent song.

Chris and Kevin's Excellent Adventure. It's a weird song the first time you listen to it, it's a song where the drums and the bass make an amazing and groovy duo together. A weird song with "vocals" (not really vocals mostly of them are whistles) but not a bad song at all just hard to digest for some

State of Grace. Do you cry with music? If you do, don't listen to this song. This song will make you cry, people say John Petrucci (the guitarist of this band) has no emotion when making his guitar compositions. This song says otherwise. The combination between the piano and the guitar makes it an amazing song with an incredible and classic-like melody. One of their best songs in my opinion.

Universal Mind. Universal Mind is one of the most known songs by Liquid Tension Experiment (along with Paradigm Shift and Freedom Of Speech). It starts the same way as Paradigm Shift, in a frenetic way, with the keyboard and guitar (and afterwards the drums) getting really crazy. This song has something that I call "The Solo Versus" where the keyboard and guitar starts like a fight of solos and we, the listener choose who is the winner between them. This song has also a beautiful piano solo right in the mid-section which makes it even better. The final part of this song may surprise you when you listen to it the first time, first a groovy beach-like part, something that you could hear in Hawaii and then a surprising famous circus melody right in the end (Entry of the Gladiators by Julius Fucik specifically ). A really cool song.

Three Minute Warning. It's funny, the name says Three Minute, but the song is almost 30 minutes long. This song (actually it's a jam) it's in my opinion one of their masterpieces. This jam has everything on it, it has melodic, crazy, calm, groovy and heavy parts. It has also a moment for every instrument in the band, the connection that the 4 members of the band has in this jam is incredible. This jam (although people find it boring) is just amazing, my favorite one from this album.

Liquid Tension Experiment is one of the album that every prog guy should listen to at least once, it has very good moments and the synergy between the band members is so comfortable.