LEGACY

SHADOW GALLERY is another one of those bands that used to be one of my favourite ones years ago (and whose records were growing dust on my shelf meanwhile). I'm really wondering how I would describe their music to someone who never heard of them (which I don't consider a shame actually). Maybe as a heavier version of KANSAS or a less complex and less technical type of SYMPHONY X. Be it this way or either I'd rather consider them redundant for both a Prog AND a metal fan. For fans of Kansas-type of music I'd rather recommend to stick to the original or go for the albums released under the name PROTO-KAW. For prog metal fans I'd know many other names to recommend first but certainly not this band. Nonetheless I find their music still moderately enjoyable (as long they don't play this type of "fabric softener-metal" as on their highly acclaimed "Carved In Stone"-album) but more for running in the back and not for an intense listen I've to say.

"Legacy", their 4th album can be considered a decent effort by them with almost any significant changes in their style compared to previous ones. We get offered here at times more powerful and sometimes more ballad-esque quite respectable airplay-friendly melodic metal. Admittedly they've thrown in as well some proggy features as moderately complex guitar/keyboard play and some vocal lines for several voices. There are also two long-tracks (triggering shiny eyes in every prog fan's face after having a quick look at the track list) which wasn't the case at all on their previous album "Tyranny". And in fact those two tracks are by far the best ones on here without being anything really groundbreaking, but nice to listen and offering at least some alternative to the usual simple verse-chorus- verse-chorus pattern shown by the other tracks. There are mainly two things I've to niggle about with this album, that are first the overall quite dull lyrics (unfortunately this applies to all of their albums) and the fact that the final track is actually a bluff package. Because in fact it does not contain almost 35 min of quite good melodic metal but "only" 22 min (which is still okay). The remaining running time is filled up with silence and a so-called (redundant) "hidden track" consisting of boring and pointless pseudo-classical noodling.

Finally I can only say that this is a quite nice record to serve as pleasant background music from time to time but by far not anything to be considered essential in progressive rock (as probably all releases by this band I dare saying). Recommended only to fans of AOR-type of music looking for some slightly more sophisticated stuff!