BURN THE SUN

Strange beautiful music. That was my impression when I first listening to ARK's Burn The Sun. Trio Tore Otsby (guitars), John Macaluso (drums), and Jorn Lande (vocals) return with their second album, Burn The Sun. This time, they are accompanied by bassist Randy Coven and keyboardist Mats Olausson. Opened with the song "Heal The Water", a progressive metal song with a crunchy and tight rhythm guitar playing, and turned out to be a typical power and speed metal song during the keys/guitar solo part. While you will find "Torn" and "Absolute Zero" to be somewhat dark musically, you will also find that the title song "Burn The Sun" is very much a radio-friendly one. "Just A Little" is an amazing song. Opened with a Spanish-acoustic guitar style by Tore Otsby with a pop-like chorus, this should be another radio-friendly song from them. If you'd like to hear an 'acoustic- progressive rock' (well, did I say it right?), have a listen on this one. "Waking Hour" sounds a bit pop too. Thanks to Jorn Lande for his voice which makes the song sound nice. "Noose" is just a typical metal song with a touch progressive metal element in the solo section. I have to admit it that the music starts boring in the middle of the album but "Feed The Fire" turned out to be a refreshment and save me out of boredom. It's a great and headbanging song. The last 2 songs, well it's not as great as its previous songs in the beginning. "I Bleed" is just a ballad song with standard lyrical theme, while "Missing You" is no better than "I Bleed", lyrically. My conclusion is that ARK has the capability to become a great band and able contribute their unique music in the progressive metal scene. What is lacking of them is most of the songs here sounds typically the same. The tempo, the riffs & rhythm changing, all are almost the same. If you had to listen the songs individually, I doubt that you'd recognize which song it is. But yes I have no doubt that would be able to do better than this effort. Unfortunately it seems that Jorn is settled in his position of MASTERPLAN's lead vocalist (now he's out of Masterplan) which may lead into no future holds for ARK. (3/5)