THE CHEMICAL CHAOS

Well, I must say!! Damn, what an album! This is my first review here, but i don't consider myself a newbee, since I've listened to progressive music half my life. And it ain't often one stumbles over an album like this.

First and foremost, just take a minute and chew on the band's name; Poverty's no Crime... Brilliant. And when the musicians are THAT talented, and with lyrics that speaks so directly, taking terms up for discussion like that (as also Pain of Salvation and Pallas does), it is most certainly almost bound to be a success. I'm so tierd of all the bullshit lyrics alot of bands have, also alot of progressive bands, regardless of subgenre, about madness and disillusion and misery, and knights and dragons (Symphony X) that really don't speak to me personally, i really don't care about knights, it's not my thing (though i'm a fan of symph. x, it's not that), and we all know the world is a F***ed up place, and loonyness and lonelyness is just a mistake or coincident away from all of us, why does every progressive song be so depressive? I'm not requesting Happy Metal, but why not try to teach the listeners something, instead of just taking away their smiles and leaving them with a feeling that nothing can be fixed?

Thats what Volker Walsemann does with his writing, he has a message, a theory on way-of-life that we should all take a lesson from. The best examples on what I mean is track number three All Minds in One, and track number seven, Do What You Feel. Both this songs are Extremely well composed, both musically and lyrically, and are the highlights of the album(of the more heavy ones) together with track five Terminal Trip wich is an instrumental one.

When it comes to the more soft, ballad type of songs, track four A World Without Me and track ten Access Denied are equally good and well written. Rest of the tracks are more standard prog, not THAT good, but not bad either. And because of that this album gets four stars from me. Not a TRULY MINDBLOWING MASTERPIECE, but it contains masterpieces, if I can say it like that, and that makes the album a must have.

(Volker is by the way a decent singer, but you can easily hear that he is german, but he hasn't THAT much of an accent)

I really can't understand why these guys are not so well known...