SYMPHONY FOR A MISANTHROPE

Trent Gardner, popular through masses of projects, e.g. "Explorer's Club", released, in cooperation with his brother, Wayne Gardner, who played the guitars, bass and added some backing vocals, a new studio release for the band Magellan, founded by the 2 brothers. Different from their last album "Impossible Figures", this is a much more symphonic album. I wouldn't call it progressive metal, I think it's symphonic prog reaching the edge to the metal sometimes. The opener "Symphonette" is a fast bombast piece with lots of different keyboard themes. "Why Water Weeds?" starts heavy but symphonic at the same time. That's what I meant with "the edge to metal", the guitar can't pierce the wall of symphonic synths! Trent Gardner's vocals are strange when you first listen to them, as well as the sarcastic lsyrics could be. The song crosses different themes but the highlight for me is the keyboard solo verse (yes, you are right : A keyboard solo is the accompanist for the vocals)! A very atmospheric and beautiful song. The next track "Wisdom" consists of a repeating guitar arpeggio and some deep piano chords. During the refrain the guitar play some chords, which are clouded by the synthezisers. The following track is "Cranium Reef Suite", a nice epic, but in my opinion not very varied, of course it's made up of different themes, but they all resemble to each other, and I think an epic should have a high diversity to avoid boredom, but nevertheless you can listen to the songs a few times, it depends on your taste if you evaluate it boring or consider it as interesting. " Pianissimo intermission" is a piano only piece based on a popular goldberg variation, of one of Bach's works! "Docotor Concoctor" has again a very heavy guitar, which goes down after the mass of synthezisers join. What I don't like about the track is the repetitive guitar during the verse, but overall it's a nice track. The final is the track "Every bullet needs blood", with a nice progressive interlude reminding me a bit of Dream Theater, some keys and a guitar, sound really good. After that it gets some kind of a techno vein during the verse, but has a beautiful chorus and is quite symphonic again, as well as the whole album! The cd is well produced, but is kind of bland and really short, I think there could have been more tracks on here. Overall I think it's a good album, but not essential!!