ENIGMATIC: CALLING

This album is a feast for fans of technical excellence. The music is a mix of Pain of Salvation, Dream Theater and many Neo Prog Metal bands ... but Pagan's Mind manage to create their own recognizable style. The guitar work is stunningly accurate and perfectly in sync with the rhythm group, and the vocals are much better than the genre average ... a bit whiny at times and too much in the high registers for my taste though.

The keyboards are in the background and provide for spherical textures more often than duelling with the guitars or taking the helm themselves, so that's a major difference to Dream Theater. They're very present though, and that emphasizes the Neo Prog influences in their sound, while the guitar dominance makes them sound a bit heavier than their peers ... but I wouldn't go so far as to call them Power Metal.

The Celestine Prophecy: The only weak track on the album. It almost made me rate this album 4 stars ... but that wouldn't be fair.

Enigmatic Mission: Outstanding track that summarizes the album, as the title suggests. It's relatively short, but has several different phases. Awesome!

Supremacy, Our Kind: A really heavy track, the intro is reminiscent of the Derek Sherinian songs with Zack Wylde. But it breaks away soon in a zany piano driven passage which then fuses with the intro guitar riff. Later on there's also a DT like interlude (think Take The Time).

Entrance to Infinity: This reminds me of Queensryche ... a slow spacey 4/4 song, almost like a ballad, but with many interesting stuff going on in the background, and a really cool shift of mood about halfway through the song, and another one near the end. So the song shifts from mysterious/driving to cool/jazzy to uplifting/driving.

Coming Home (instrumental): In this instrumental the keyboards are more dominant, and although it is only 2 1/2 minutes long, it has a really interesting structure.

Celestial Calling: This might be the heaviest track of the album. The riffing reminds of Symphony X, at least in the intro. At 2:22 the song breaks down, and pizzicato strings kick off a really cool segway. After one of the few keyboard solos the song slowly returns to the beginning ... only to disrupt once again into a 2 minute long outro.

Taken: An interesting track which incorporates oriental influences, and the keyboards are really used in an unusual way, emulating rhythm guitar riffs, giving the piece an surreal feeling. The middle third of the song is dominated by guitar solos on top of shifting keyboard layers.

Resurrection (Back in Time): I love intricate technical songs, and this is a prime example. It has an alternating 4/4 7/8 signature, mixed with straight 4/4 passages. It reminds of Vanden Plas a bit, they also have the tendency to combine really straight passages with sudden heavy technical bits.

Appearance (instrumental): A short instrumental, keyboards only. It has a peaceful, ambient character and provides a wonderful contrast to the previous technical onslaught.

Search for Life: The song begins very mellow, with acoustic guitars and piano on top of the textural keyboards of the preceding track - and no drums. It's a nice soft song, which changes about halfway through. Mystical sound effects and a accentuated piano riff kick off a more driving version of the song, with full guitars and drums.

New World Order: This might be my favorite track, it has all of the above, so to say.