DEADWING

In the last years, you can easily discover a trend of many bands in the pro genre. Music is getting heavier and heavier. Examples are Symphony X or Dream Theater and other band as well. Porcupine Tree are one of them. They started with very soft "Pink Floyd"-reminding music and turned to rough "etal"now, but keeping the old signatures, so that there are less of those "metal" parts here. They're still keeping the effects, marking Porcupine Tree since their early days. The title track starts with an "effect-run", the guitar joins with some slight chords and it's already starting to get a bit heavier for a moment. After that the first chords return and the first verse begins. What I don't like are the monoton, with the time, boring drums, destroying my fantastic experience of the song a bit. The song traverses different themes, with brilliant melodies, changing from heavy to soft. "Shallow" is a typical rock song, featuring and of Porcupine Tree's definite radio hits! "Lazarus" has even been released as a single, and is a piano driven track with soft drums! The next track "Halo" starts off with a nice bass line which continues during the first verse. The pre-chorus is a spoken part, talking about god, always with "god is.", the chorus is a nice melodic piece in here. This is repeated another time and a weird heavy interlude follows. After that, the chorus follows very fluent, accompanied with an acoustic guitar this time. "Arriving Somewhere but not here" is the longest track on the album and changes again from soft to heavy, but really reaches here the rough metal vein! It starts very slowly and softly though with a nice arpeggio, played during the verse but soon afterwards that changes and an interlude introduces the very heavy part that fits quite good and sounds nice too. Mikael Åkerfeldt, guest musician on this album, adds a nice solo and the same effect after that weird part in "Halo", the arpeggio follows with an enormous power creating a great feeling! "Mellotron Scratch" is a slower track, as well as "Glass Arm Shattering", with one exception : "Mellotron Scratch" has a "heavier" part inside, that is very complicated and features a nice drum work. "Open Car" is my favourite track on this album. It starts with a staccato riff, that is the verse as well again. The pre-chorus is very soft again and prevents the fantastic atmospheric chorus, reminding me a bit of Hoobastank's "The Reason", built up just with 2 powerchords, but creating an awesome feeling, like so many scenes on this album. A final accoutic part rounds this great song. "The Start of Something Beautiful" has the same kind of chorus, but a permament soft style besides. So this is a great, stunning and varied album, highly recommended for fans of Porcupine Tree, Pink Floyd, Opeth and even some metal fans could risk an ear! I totally love it and for me it is definitely a masterpiece!