A MURDER OF CROWS

When I first began returning to prog several years ago, Deadsoul Tribe's Lullaby for the Devil was new. It came up on numerous internet mixes and I enjoyed the tracks and bought the album. Here on PA, however, the opinion seemed to be much more enthusiastic for the earlier MURDER OF CROWS. It took me awhile to pick up the album, and when I did I was a bit disappointed. There's virtually nothing on this album that isn't done better on the newer disc.

DST's sound is a kind of Tool-lite with frontman Devon Graves having better vocal abilities than Maynard but not nearly as much batcrap crazy that is actually the driving force of the band. The rhythm section is not nearly as good as Tool's, though the electric guitars are much better at least when they play lead. In fact, the instrumental sections with lead guitar (and if we're really lucky flute) are the best parts of the album, but they are too few. Though Graves' vocals are in some ways too perfect technically, he just doesn't write very good melodies. Probably the only memorable one for me is "In a Garden Made of Stones," which I do find myself singing along with. The lyrics are typical dark angst-y stuff, but aren't nearly as deep as Graves thinks they are.

MURDER OF CROWS is also not that progressive. I love metal in 3, but that's not enough to make you prog. Okay, "Garden Made of Stones" is in 7, and also has the best riffs just from a bang-your-head point of view. This song reminds me of the Dark Suns album, which is more prog top to bottom. "Flies" is in 5. Much of the rest of this is post-grunge (if that a term) and though solid, not that memorable. "Angels in Vertigo," "Regret," and the bonus track "Time" are a bit better than the other songs. But again, without the track listing in front of me, I would only be able to tell you the name of one song of this album, despite many listens...I really wanted to love this album.

I have always said that if Graves ever really dug into his Tull fetish and incorporated his flute fully into the music with more acoustic tones, he might actually have something I'd really dig. LULLABY has a flute metal instrumental that is my favorite thing on a DST album. On MURDER OF CROWS we get one tease, on "Black Smoke and Mirrors," but it's not enough. Supposedly the new Shadow Theory is more in this vein, and I should be getting that in the next few weeks.

Bottom line, get LULLABY FOR THE DEVIL. And go see Psychotic Waltz live if you can. If you really want to check this one out, just download "Garden" and "Black Smoke." I'd put the album somewhere between 2 and 3 stars, but I'm rounding down because of the better options available.

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