RETROSPECTIVE

In the pack of European progressive metal, Silent Memorial's "Retrospective" may be just that, it cetainly takes cues from those that went before, but no where near as blatantly as most of the others. It seems overlooked, but certainly shouldn't be.

SM seem a little more mature and more skilled than many of their counterparts. There's standard references to all the usual bands, but they are more like a cranked up flashy version of Evergrey than the Dream Theater clones like Pagan's Mind, or the Pagan's Mind clones like Circus Maximus, etc, etc.

SM manage to avoid the cringe worthy nature of some of the Eurometal sound. Their sound is mature and melodic, with a busy crunchy guitar sound and keyboards that play just enough of a role.

There are plenty of mind boggling technical interludes and some excellent guitar solos. The guitars are very crunchy but flow well, drumming is excellent as are all other performances. The vocal are provided by Cloudscape vocalist, and whilst his band may be a bit more popular (see Eurometal), this music really suits his Coverdale like mid ranged delivery.

I found it hard to find time to listen to this, it's been one that when I had my first listen knew it was classy and could probably wait till I was ready for it. In the meantime I've tried out plenty of other Euro power prog acts and the only ones that are up there with SM would be Anubis Gate, Beyond Twilight, Evergrey, Guilt Machine and Wolverine - though perhaps these are all a bit too different from each other.

In summary, I don't think you can do much better than this in the standard progressive metal arena and as such it is a worthy addition.