ARRIVAL

It's been a while since I've gotten my fix of obscure Russian prog, and as always, the request to check this album out intrigued me, given how versatile a lot of these sorts of bands managed to be within the realm of retro symphonic prog. This is where Arrival caught me off guard so much, as instead of being greeted by soft moog and orchestral instruments, what awaited me was layers of guitar that led into a hard hitting riff, paving the way for a very different sort of listening experience to what I expected, and to be honest, I'm not exactly sure whether I completely this or not.

The first thing that I picked up was the fact that the intro to The Enlightened sounds like a slightly altered version of Dream Theater's Panic Attack, with a similar sounding bassline backed up by an overall mysterious sound that constantly seems to escalate, until it breaks into one riff after another. Something else I picked up was that while the album transitions between riffs and ideas at a breakneck pace, each one lingers just long enough to be highly memorable, giving the album quite a lot of identity on the whole. If there's one issue I have with this track, and by extension, this album, it's that I'm not the biggest fan of the vocals, as while the more melodic aspects of it are quite nice, it feels like there's very little power behind the singer's voice whenever he aims to reach the dramatic flair that it feels like he intended. One of the things on the whole that I find to be a detriment to the album is that lack of power, but even so, I find that it's balanced out exceptionally by the impressive instrumentation backed up by some really catchy hooks that carry a surprising amount of emotion behind them, despite the somewhat unusual sounding accent of the vocalist, something which I feel not even Riverside accomplished to such a degree. Despite the fact that songs like Shrine of Holes manage to be full of energy and all around fun to listen to, the 2 highlights outside of The Enlightened are undoubtedly Zombie Thrush and Dogmann, partially for the same reason, that reason being the addition of the bass clarinet, which really allows the song to shine that bit more by giving another instrument to take part in the solos that end up sounding like duels between the musicians involved. It also helps quite a bit that these are where the album really perfects the riffs on it, with the interplay between the bass and guitar being absolutely on point, making it very satisfying to listen to. Outside of the vocals, the other problem I have is that the extremely cohesive, singular sound of much of the album works against the overall experience, due to the fact that the lack of emotional range present here causes many tracks to begin melding with one another to the point where my investment in the album begins to diminish, making the final third of the album quite a chore, despite the fact that the songs themselves still maintain fairly consistent quality, it's just that the quality isn't quite high enough to remain consistently engaging.

Overall, while this definitely was quite a different experience to what I expected from this band, the album did not wholly win me over. I feel like there were a lot of aspects of this that were quite good, but the overall album just didn't come together quite right, with the very one note feel it has causing my enjoyment of this album to plummet towards the end. That said, there's a lot of this that's done quite well regardless, and I feel like with some refinement and additional variety, this band could make some decently compelling prog metal, and I didn't dislike my time with this album by any means.

Best tracks: The Enlightened, Zombie Thrush, Dogmann

Weakest tracks: Cause and Defect, Clown Within the Mask, Salt the Wound

Verdict: Fairly standard prog metal, but with a bit more intensity, technicality and identity than your usual bog standard generic stuff. If you're really into prog metal you might get a kick out of it, and it's competent overall, but don't expect to be completely blown away by this either, it's just an all around decent prog metal album with an occasional bit of flair thrown in.