THE SEVENTH SIGN

The Seventh Sign from Section A is fairly vanilla prog metal with a good dose of hair metal vocals. When the first vocals that come out are a primal scream that would go well on a Dokken album, many may cringe a bit. Andy Enberg has a decent voice but he was born many years too late to take full advantage of it.

The music reminds me a bit of Symphony X but is a bit less heavy and not so technical. Main man Torben Enevoldsen plays guitars, bass and keys (with two guest spots for keys, one of which is Derek Sherinian). Enevoldsen also wrote all the music. And since he is the main man and wrote all the music, by golly he is going to give himself some over the top guitar solos. Many show off a heavy quotient of notes per minute and tend to be a bit samey after awhile. But the guy can certainly play. All this shredding leaves little room for much in the way of keyboards except for the guest spots on three songs. On Nightmare, Enevoldsen and Sherinian go to the DT well with a back and forth guitar/keyboard solo. The Spanish guitar makes an appearance on the almost 10-minute Tomorrow, probably the highlight of the album. Of course there is a two-minute long electric guitar solo squarely in the middle of it.

Section A has made a serviceable prog metal album here but as so often happens, the songwriting cannot keep up with the chops and you are left with an effort somewhere in the middle of the morass of metal offerings being foisted onto the buying public. An "A" for effort but only two stars for the complete package. Sorry guys.