SUBJECTIVE ENEMY

'Warning', the second song starts up like a reflection from Labyrinth's Sons of Thunder era, the pace continues straight through 2 other midtempo metal songs until the first metal ballad 'Words' which sounds peculiarly like Jon Oliva's handiwork. It takes until track 8 - the titletrack - when Ivory Tower take a halfhearted return to the days of 'Beyond the Stars' The Ivory Tower of 2008 make extensive use of multiple voice tracks and sometimes unnverving doses of eiry delay when mixing the voice tracks into the weave of the music. 'My World' also falls victim to this practice without getting the chance to benefit from an aggressive breaking shriek or grunt here and there. Starting with 'Welcome to' the album gets much much better both in variable songwriting and lack of inhibition to unleash it onto the audience. 'Welcome to', 'Construction Site', 'Keys' and the semi-epic 11 minute 'Awake' reward the listener for hanging on through 37 minutes of all too often unmotivated and bleak prog metal. In my case I had little choice being stuck with it on a long drive in a rental car.

I'm glad I got this CD from a second hand store, for full price I would have felt very disappointed. I give it a 2.6, rounded up to 3.