PRESETS

While this album is progressive, it has pop music intertwined, making the songs quite accessible. Of course, people who do not listen to progressive music would probably think the music was from another planet, but for prog-heads, this music would likely seem to lean toward pop music. However, in this case, Sylvan makes it work as an accessible progressive rock album.

Marco Glühmann's vocals are superb on this album. He may use falsetto on this album a little too much, but makes up for it by belting out high registering passages in other areas. Indeed, his voice is the most beautiful when he pushes his limits in the higher registers (without going into falsetto).

For those who are not familiar with Sylvan, Glühmann's vocal range is not the highest in pitch and that is a good thing in my opinion, as I typically enjoy male vocals that are above the average range for male vocalists. Additionally, I have yet to hear him use vibrato (which I usually do not enjoy).

The production on this album is superb; everything flows nicely together, creating a beautiful album. It is nice to see a band setting aside their need to prove their technical skills as musicians and becoming great song-writers/creators instead. The rhythms are not anything special, but they make up for it with well-crafted songs.

The songs typically involve an oscillation between brooding, melancholic and sometimes rather restricted (tonally) grooves that explode into ethereal, soaring, confident, sometimes joyful, sometimes melancholic and always beautifully drawn out crescendos. This album makes good use of orchestral elements often incorporating many instruments.

This album is not necessarily an album you would want to listen to from start-to-finish (while all the songs are good, they are somewhat limited in stylistic variety), but it makes a good addition to any progressive music collection for those who like to shuffle their progressive music for variety.