KING OF DECEIT

During the last couple of decades Finland has gotten a reputation for yieldin a lot of quality metal bands from many genres, but straight up Prog Metal has very much remained in the shadows. Reversion is a band trying to change that. Coming slowly together during the first half of the decade and recording a bunch of unreleased and released demos they honed their chops to the condition you now hear on their debut full length album released in 2008.

Reversion draws influence from bands such as Dream Theater, Meshuggah and Tool, and especially the first two are audible on this album. And that's the biggest problem I have with it. It's too easy to pinpoint the DT moments, the Meshuggah moments and perhaps some Tool moments here and there as well. Instead of mixing the influences and coming up with something completely original one might get the feeling that they're out to compose a DT section here and follow it with a Meshuggah section there with not all that much own input. But luckily there are lots of pure Reversion sections as well.

Despite these bad words the material is fortunately mostly very good. The band members are all top notch musicians and they write powerful riffs and quite catchy melodies. And in the great Prog Metal tradition they have a lot of fun with their instruments, the soloing sections handled mostly by the quick-fingered and melodic guitarist Samuli Federley. His sometimes lightning fast solos are contrasted well by keyboardist Jonne Jauhiainen's more soaring touch. Bassist Jaakko Nikko's fat sound gives a great kick for the riffing and the drum powerhouse Toni Paananen is flawless throughout. And they all play really well together, I especially enjoy the rather unexpected unison breaks of the opening track Mindstorm that manage to not cut the flow of the music but give a great touch of plain enjoyment of playing. Perhaps the greatest single asset of the band is vocalist Aleksi Parviainen who can do a lot of things with his voice from the highest power metal yells to the lowest growls but concentrates on singing instead of showing off. It's very difficult to pinpoint any highlight tracks from the album, they all feature their tasty sections and some a little less, all in all making a solid bunch of tracks. Perhaps the album closing title track with the long repetitive arpeggio pattern strikes the chord the most with me.

A very good debut despite the flaws mentioned. Given that they continue developing their own voice with future releases they might become a very big thing in the Prog Metal scene. Recommendable but not essential.