THE DEAD WORD

This is my first foray into the Dead Soul Tribe and I can quite honestly say I like what I hear. Whether you call it prog-metal or art metal, the sound is relatively unique and thankfully different than the usual mainstream hard rock / metal music these days. Devon Graves is definitely a gifted vocalist able to emote warmth and subtlety one moment and roar with power the next moment. At times, he reminds me a lot of Maynard James Keenan from Tool, especially on the second track. I really like the drumming by Adel Moustafa who isn't content with just playing the same, basic beats throughout each song. He adds a great deal of different styles and fills to keep the percussion interesting and varied while at the same time adding a great deal of texture to each composition.

I have only one complaint about this recording, and that has to do with the production and mixing. One aspect of Prog music that I really like is that it is generally produced and mixed better than mainstream music. Like a good deal of recordings these days, everyone wants to mix their albums as hot and loud as possible. Unfortunately, this usually results in clipping. As good as the production seems on this album, the mixing is so darned hot that it clips in spots. As an audiophile, I find this most annoying. The most obvious spot of clipping occurs at the 4:40 mark of Waiting in Line. While the clipping isn't nearly as bad and obvious as on Rush's album Vapor Trails or Uriah Heep's album Sea of Light, it's still annoying in that it should not have been necessary for this album to have been mixed so hot.