NOAH

Apparently, this original started life as a story-based project back in 2005 by Frederic Epe (vocals, keyboards), but over time it became a musical collaboration between Frederic and Michel Epe (guitars) with Glenn (production, guitars). To create the science fiction concept album they wanted, they brought in others such as Damian Wilson (Threshold, Ayreon), Karl Groom (Threshold), Davy Mickers (Stream of Passion, Ayreon) and Alejandro Millán (Hello Madness, Stream of Passion) soon joined the project to bring the story to life. Swedish designer Mattias Norén, created the artwork that appears in the booklet with the lyrics. But, while this 2010 has been hailed as a major success by some, I'm not one of them.

It is doubtful that I will ever criticise an album that involves Karl and Damian as I am such a fan of both their works, but what lets this down is not the performance but the quality of the songs. This is prog metal, but it is disjointed in just so many ways. A good project album will feel either like a band, or a rock theatre production, yet this one falls between the two camps and comes across as disjointed and just way too over the top. It is too layered, too over produced, just too much altogether! There are bits that grab the attention, but for the most part it is about wondering how much longer this has to go, and whether now might be a time to switch to something else.

It's not awful, it's not bad, but I can't bring myself to say that it is anything more than good at best, and when looking at some of the people involved it just goes to show that the basis of any album must be the quality of the songs. If the foundation is shaky, then the structure is never going to be sound and stable. The only real positive about this is that now I've written about it I really don't have to play it again, and it is doubtful that I will.