ONE HOUR BY THE CONCRETE LAKE

This is a pretty good album, it seemed like Daniel and his band of brothers set their sights too high for this album.even for a top-brass band like this. In terms of concept.the album is brilliant and would pave the way for future releases that have also been concept pieces.

Since I believe concept is open to interpretation, I'll leave my take on it as short as possible. The background of the concept was a result of Daniel's study of Peacework and Nuclear Physics at the University of Gothenburg that lead to the idea of this concept. Simply the concept is about a man who makes weaponry and questions if his work is moral and what it is doing to society (war and murder). He then tries to break free from the 'machine'.

The line-up on this album is the very consistent and classic lineup until the post-BE era. Most of the music was written once again by Daniel Gildenlow, with some help from other members on a few tracks including the departed Daniel Magdic. Daniel Gildenlow is once again on guitars and vocals, Fredrik Hermansson on keyboard, the newest addition and an excellent versatile one at that, Johan Langell on guitar and vocals, Kristoffer Gildenlow on bass and vocals and finally Johan Hallgren on drums. Johan Langell joined the band just in time for the recording process; he had no implementation on the music.

The sound is a lot darker then the debut album, the tempo is also much faster, especially on some of the keyboard parts. The music features a lot of instrumental passages with electric and acoustic guitars. The big mistake made on this album is too much emphasis on making sure everyone knows it is a heavy conceptual work. There is a lot of repetition in some of the leads and lyrics on separate tracks. On the masterpieces to come, the leads and lyrics were brought back, but altered. The thing was though, you could tell you have heard it before on the album, but it was revised and given a new meaning. Basically, this album didn't have that. Things also tended to get a tad boring in the middle, but the beginning and end of the album were certainly potent with some original and mind boggling stuff. There was also a lot of typical prog-metal in some areas that has been overdone, even at the time of this album.

I guess one could say this album might have been pretentious at the time; they weren't quite ready for this. However, the band was certainly mature enough to still pull off a really good album. I'd recommend this to any die-hard prog-metal fan and any fan of the band should definitely own this. Also, check out the pictures, we have Fredrik Hermansson with long hair and Johan Hallgren with none!!! 3.5 stars, a very good album.

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