CARVED IN STONE

The successor of this bands debut immediately starts with the first mindblowing composition they made in their career and up till now I still consider it as one of their very best ever. I'm talking about Cliffhanger of course, a track where Gary Wehrkamp shows his abilities big time and also a composition that shows great class and potential (4,5*).

Unfortunately the next track is almost in the same style is most tracks on the debut, maybe slightly better (3,5*). This album by the way has all kinds of short interludes that really don't add anything positive to the album so I wonder why a band does something like this. The second one of these reminds me a lot of V:The New Mythology but this album by Symphony X was composed 5 years later so that means that SX would be the imitator unless it's all coincidence of course and we're talking about similarity and not about copying. But still it makes you wonder ....

5th (3rd in real) song is a bit ballad-like, good song but not exceptional (3,25*). Next three shorter songs are quite mediocre in my belief and are probably the least of the album (appr. 3* each). Alaska is another ballad and somewhat better than the previous few (3,25*). Finally we have the epical Ghostship, a better one than the Queen of the City of Ice of the debut but a little bit incoherent in the end (3,6*).

So that leaves us with one fantastic song (Cliffhanger) and the rest that is slightly better than the debut so all in all it's an improvement and we know by now they would keep improving with their next (Tyranny). A positive conclusion for Carved in Stone but not yet fully mature (3,4).