MIRAGE - A PORTRAYAL OF FIGURES

Flaming Row is a progressive metal rock band originally from Gottingen, Lower Saxony in Germany. Flaming Row isn't contained to one genre, making use of progressive rock, heavy metal, folk elements and many more to substantiate their characteristic sound. The initial idea was to create a conceptual album with many different musicians, especially singers, both female and male, in the same vein of the Dutch Ayreon's rock opera project of Arjen Anthony Lucassen.

The band was formed by the German musician Martin Schnella in 2008. As I mentioned before, with influences from different styles of music, Flaming Row is a mixture of progressive metal and rock and mainstream metal. Schnella wrote quite a bit of music for Flaming Row and put it together to form complete songs. To further his ideas, Martin asked his friend Kiri Geile to join the band. Kiri's task was writing a story for the concept. Within the months both completed the story "Elinoire", a drama about a young British family. Therefore, their debut studio album was released named "Elinoire" in 2011. The recording sessions started in late 2008 but most all of the music was recorded until the end of 2009. A lot of friends and local musicians supported the duo and thus Flaming Row became an international band project. In 2014, Flaming Row released their sophomore studio work, this one, "Mirage - A Portrayal Of Figures".

The line up on "Mirage - A Portrayal Of Figures" is Melanie Mau (vocals), Martin Schnell (lead and backing vocals, guitar, bass and keyboards), Marek Arnold (keyboards and saxophone) and Niklas Kahl (drums). "Mirage ? A Portrayal Of Figures" has also the participation of many other artists, singers and musicians, as guests.

"Mirage - A Portrayal Of Figures" is a massive rock opera-like album that has a cohesive and definite story. This is an album massive in many ways, from the length, the story to the guest artists. These guests include members of bands such as Haken, Spock's Beard, Pain Of Salvation, and even Ayreon. This is really impressive for a band that is only on their second album. This is another conceptual album that revolves around the Magistrate, a group of alien rulers that have decided that mankind has progressed too far in their technological abilities, but not far enough in their morality or unity. The lyrical content is epic at times, delicate and quiet in others. It's obviously quite an undertaking, and I believe they pull it off pretty well. The music is the shining force with its eclectic mixture of styles keeping things interesting.

"Mirage - A Portrayal Of Figures" has eight tracks. "Mirage - A Portrayal Of Figures Pt.1" opens the album in an epic way including a playful ragtime piano and a saxophone sequence. It has multiple layers of vocals and some interesting guitar solos. "Aim L45" is a quieter, more organic and folksy tune that is very beautiful. It's a track dedicated to a more Celtic and folk flavoured type of music with a kind of medieval touch, often visited throughout this kind of albums in Ayreon's style. "Burning Sky" starts the massive feeling all over again. This is rather representative of the entire album, as the styles and tone move up and down and all over the place. It has some melodic vocals, roaring keyboard parts alongside metal heavy guitar riffs. "Journey To The Afterlife" is very different. It's strongly influenced by the blues and country music, with female vocals that provides us subtly funk-tinged guitar riffs. This is a weird but pleasant form of embedding different styles into one single track. "Alcatraz" can be seen as a regular rock song. It's a carefully southern rock flavored variety of hard melodic rock in the best way, including some nice guitar solos. "Memento Mori" is perhaps the best progressive track on the all album. It has vocals in the Shadow Gallery's style but with a very attractive female voice, with metal riffs and a strong outburst of keyboards. This is another great track. "Pictures" sees their progressive rock being mixed with a folksy edge. It hones in on the symphonic flavoured ballad and blends this with the previously described folk- oriented style. "In Appearance - A Portrayal Of Figures Pt. 2" is the final epic, an absolute highlight. It joins the main pieces, mainly alternating between a more classic progressive metal style and the folk-inspired delicate style. It has a smooth perfect vocal part followed by powerful guitars, which are played over a nice layer of keyboards.

Conclusion: "Mirage - A Portrayal Of Figures" is a progressive work in all its splendour, moving from the instrumental frenzy to the symphonic calm and from vocal jousting to the great flights. It delivers everything that the predecessor promised, symphonic, melodic, metallic and progressive rock, which is skillfully enriched with a lot of acoustic, and even folk as well as a tiny pinch of jazz. It's dynamic, flowing, changing, yet with a distinct purpose and direction. The band appears to establish themselves as fine providers of ambitious rock operas of the ensemble variety, sporting an impressive guest list of artists that appears to have been selected more by their individual qualities. They can enrich the album but not by their commercial impact value. The end result is a strong album, much more varied in style than many other productions of this kind. For those who enjoy Ayreon's style this is an album that should be on your radar.

Prog is my Ferrari. Jem Godfrey (Frost*)

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