II = I

An awesome Band! Andromeda is great: heavy, progressive, technical... I haven´t heard the first album, but II=I is very, very good. Great Vocals, superb guitars, ingenious keyboards and powerful drums. Sure they best effort is yet to come.

The first album - Extension of the Wish - is the best metal album I have ever heard... this one didn't quite live up to expectations but is a great album nontheless. First album had very little vocals and relied more on the amazing skills of Johan Reinholdz. This album the focus has been taken off of the hugely skillful musicians and diverted it to the vocalist which is unfortunatte as the vocalist is a newcomer to the band... II=I resembles a quieter, more subdued version of the original Andromeda with undertones of Mr Bungle and classical influences.

This is the second album of Sweden band formed in 1999. They released their debut "Extension of The Wish" in 2001. There is a change in line-up since the debut album with new lead singer David Fremberg and the exit of previous bass player Gert Daun. The bass line is now taken care by the guitar player Johan Reinholdz. Basically it has transformed from five-piece to four-piece band. The rest of the band members are intact: Thomas Lejon looks after drum stools and Martin Herdin (keyboards).

The band has a potential future as great band in progressive metal arena. This album represents their existence in this arena demonstrating their ability to compose and deliver their music with power and energy. Using Mike Portnoy's view of sort of progressive metal elements (*), this album is heavy (70%), progressive (10%) and melodic (20%). Despite its power and energy, the album is (sometimes) lacking in structure and harmony, I would say. It's probably a mixing / production issue.

Having been opened with soft keyboard and guitar, "Encyclopedia" blasts off with heavy riffs and speed bass line followed by vocal. The music flows in full energy with soft guitar riffs at background. At tempo change, during transition, guitar takes its solo part augmented with symphonic keyboard at background. To my personal taste, the harmony between guitar riffs and drum is a bit lacking. It sounds rough to my ears. At approx min 4:50 - the part where the voice is backed with solo drum and keyboard punch - it does not sound natural to me. This track has a very good guitar solo (in the vein of classic rock music) at the ending part. Unfortunately . this guitar solo has to end not in natural way - it fades out and replaced by tape loop of percussion sound. Uughh . what a regret!

"Mirages" starts off with heavy guitar riffs / solo followed by drumming. The voice line enters the scene with the riffs at the back. There is nice keyboard work combined with guitar solo accompanying the vocal. The guitar solo during interlude is stunning.

"Reaching Deep Within" kicks off with a guitar and keyboard works followed by drum and bass. Again, it sounds to me that this part is lacking harmony and melody. It sounds rough. The riffs produced during the voice line are simple but a bit boring to me. To me, this is a straight forward metal tune. "Two Is One" is the longest track (10:09) . It starts with a nice guitar fills followed by slow tempo music to feature voice line. No guitar riffs at this part. The tempo moves faster at approx min 4:00 with higher tone voice line. The guitar riffs start to roll in the middle of the track augmented with good keyboard sound. The combination of guitar and keyboard solo during interlude / transitions is really good.

"Morphing Into Nothing" is an upbeat instrumental piece demonstrating keyboard and guitar sounds. It's a very good composition. I like the harmony of two sounds (keyboard and guitar) in the middle of the track (approx min 4:00) onward. It actually can be better if the mixing is improved as it sounds bit rough to me.

"Castaway" is a mellow track performed in ballad style. The vocal harmony is excellent, the piano fills are stunning. No riffs; guitar is played with fills. No drumming. Solo piano is wonderful. I can hear that the lead singer voice in low register is very good. It's a melodic and relaxing track.

"Parasite" blows off with heavy music and it flows in typical prog met music. The music turns quieter in the middle of the track with great keyboard and voice line. This part is really nice. I can hear sort of jazz/fusion influence in this track.

"One In My Head" starts off with a melodic piano / keyboard touch followed by upbeat music with excellent guitar and keyboard. This track has relatively long instrumental as the vocal takes off around the middle of the track. Despite good performance, this track is lacking in structure (music wise) and mixing (production wise).

"This Fragile Surface" is probably the most symphonic one compared to the other tracks. Yes, there are guitar riffs still but it only accentuates the bars during the voice line. The guitar solo and keyboard work are really wonderful and melodic. This is an excellent track well positioned to conclude the album.

Overall this album is good but not essential. However, I would still recommend this album for those of you who like progressive metal music like Dream Theater, Symphony X, Ice Age, Pain of Salvation, Evergrey, etc. Rating: 3.25/5. GW, Indonesia.

Reference: (*) Interview with Mike Portnoy of Dream Theater as it can be seen from DREAM THEATER "Live at Budokan" DVD - disc 2. It's a simple and practical definition of progressive metal genre, I think.

Dissapointing. I purchased this album after recieving several recommendations and thats the only way I can describe it. Andromeda serves up a prog metal, 9 track album that is riddled with cliches and suffers horribly from derivititus. Its hard to fault the band from a technical perspective, there are stellar performances throughout on each instrument. The problem for me here is that the music lacks any identity of its own, with the band all too often recounting riffs/themes that are just too reminiscent of bands like Dream Theater and Shadow Gallery. If you are a fan of heavy progressive music and have not tired of the legion of Dream Theater clones you may find something of interest here...otherwise steer clear.

this album commands nothing less than five stars. Not one bad song in the bunch. it is beautiful from start to finish. every song has a beautiful into. there is a nice balance of metal and mellow stuff. the keyboards are fantastic. the guitars are perfect, even reminds me of John Petrucci, who I consider to be the best in the business. great singer, much better than the first singer. his voice almost reminds me of Daniel Gildenlow from Pain of Salvation, who is hands down the greatest singer since Freddie Mercury. this album is essential and I guarantee you will not be disappointed. Perfect! I can't stop playing it. Enough said. Buy it!

The 2nd studio release by Sweden's Andromeda. Although there are elements of other prog-metal bands they have created their own distinctively style full of synthesizer and effects. All the musicians are on a quite high niveau if you consider they're all about 20! The music changes from heavy passages to soft passages always with a nice melody, the required complexity and expressive vocals. Although the guitar is often quite heavy it never gets harder then Dream Theater and there are never any growls by the singer. Highlights are the title track "Two is one", the freaky instrumental "Morphing into Nothing" (reminds a bit of Liquid Tension Experiment) and Parasite. At all it's a quite diversified by a very young and talented band, but it's not essential.

Relatively new Prog Metal band from Sweden brings nostalgia of Dream Theater.

Andromeda is a Progressive Metal band from Sweden. I have almost nothing but comments from this great and relatively new band. II=I is there second studio release. When one listens to it, the elements of a dark emotional sound with an excellent mix hard and soft matierial will become apparent.

The album is written similar to Dream Theater. Throughout all of the album there are jazzy overtones complimenting the funk-styled rythym playing. Thomas LeJon is a Progressive Metal drummer with talents that can compare even to Mike Portnoy and Virgil Donati. Johan Reinholdz is one of the very best young progressive metal guitarists. On certain occaisions his playing can excel ahead of players like John Petrucci. The future is very bright for this young guitarist (who doubles on bass). His styled is extremely smooth and jazzy, truly a pleasure to listen to. Martin Hedin is also an apt keyboardist. Hedin has excellent skill, but lacks synth sound creativity. The only complaint I really have are the vocals from David Fremberg. He fits the band somewhat nicely, but he has trouble in some of the more delicate tracks. If his voice matures enough to sing smoother in softer parts, he also has a bright future.

The album is quite a piece of work. The opening track Encyclopedia imeadiately gets the listener thinking about the lyrics. The title track Two Is One is a Progressive art. The song has a special touch to it to keep building with emotion while staying calm musically. The track finally starts to climax at the end which was a perfect lead to the next track, the insturmental Morphing Into Nothing. The insturmental shows off the amazing insturmental talents this band has. It's even comparable to Dance of Eternity by Dream Theater, but it's longer and showcases more guitars than keyboards.

The production isn't lively, but it really fits the album. The tones are dark and subtle. Even the drums have a certain bleakness to their tone. The bass isn't noticeable, but Johan Reinholdz makes his living in this band as a guitarist, not a bassist. The keyboards are my only complaint as they are somewhat uncreative with the tone selection.

The music is definately five star quality, but the band is young and I'm sure to see better work from them in the future. A 4 star rating is adequate.

I select around 40 cd's to go on holiday in my black box, and like my review of ASCENSION THEORY, this goes with it. Several earlier views sum up the album, brilliant.Mixtures of fast hard rock/metals and more mellow sounds are the ingridents for a great album,unlike the 3rd album Chimera which I spent a lot of money tracking down and buying to be rather disappointed

Excellent disc of the Swedish band ANDROMEDA, al to perish is another very good band that it comes from Scandinavian, that zone where this concentrating very good bands, is the new cluster of bands that are bringing forth talents worthy to turn around to see handle leaves from the earth, where bands like PAIN OF SALVATION and EVERGRAY, are emphasizing inside del world del progressive metal, without doubt some is as in many other bands the well-known influence of DREAM THEATER this does not mean that it is not a great band, all the opposite, is of the bands which they are in fight to look for his own style or better said this managing to be different and innovating, its first album "Extension Of The Wish" of the 2001, this considered by many as the most puristic work of this band but in fact is metalero and this is more progressive, without a doubt these Swedish with this work obtain a good combination, even between song and song uses the negative time or dead, this is part of the producer and leader Martin HEDIN, even has sounds that TANGERINE DREAM remember to me, clear that these being leaves from the tie of the songs does not last much but is without a doubt a sample of originality of the band, is possible to indicate that DREAM THEATER in "Octavarium" uses this resource also, without a doubt some this band develops with great virtuosity that apparently is already a requirement to exert this type of style, this also must extend to all the members of the band, something that much enjoys and that him lack to many bands of this nature is instrumental passages, if it has them but they would have of being more extensive, I have always said it if something gains the progressive metal as far as distinction is the instrumentation, clear when this this too much focused in the metal and is not let to him combine with the progressive essence. In conclusion this it is a disc that it looks for to be something more than the preservative disc of progressive, is obtained to a great extent to the small variations that Martin HEDIN does, who without a doubt does not provide a good short while of good music.

After a blazing first album, this one is really a huge step down. Extension was a very up-tempo and technical. It was a fresh sound for progressive metal. In this album, however, the band regresses into cliched themes and sounds. Even the vocalist, who was so expressive and wonderful in extension, is not nearly as good. The music lacks originality. Many of the melodies and instrumentals have been borrowed from Symphony X.

All things said, I find this album to be very boring. Even as I write this review, I cannot even so much as recall a single song that I prefer over another. The songs all sound the same and blend together. The album is too lukewarm to be considered good. My suggestion, buy Extension of the Wish and forget that this album even exists.

After the success of their debut "Extension Of The Wish" they follow it up with an allbum that seems to be more focused on the vocallist (and songs) and less on the instrumental work (that is their strength). Well, for whatever reason this one does not hold up well to their first one.

"Encyclopedia" features lots of tempo shifts good guitar and heavy drums. I enjoy the lighter passages a lot, especially the guitar melodies.There seems to be a dark undercurrent throughout this song. "Mirages" opens with slow, heavy riffs with some good guitar solos and keyboard flurries. "Reaching Deep Within" is a song that employs the background synths I like so much. Lots of riffs too. "Two Is One" is the longest song here and the first half is mellow with piano and soft vocals while the second half is more uptempo and heavy.

"Morphing Into Nothing" is a full speed ahead instrumental. These guys can play ! "Castaway" has some reserved vocals and beautiful piano melodies. "Parasite" is all over the place with lots of mood and tempo shifts. The aggressive vocals that come and go don't do much for me at all. "One In My Head" opens with piano and has some complex arrangments. This is an interesting,well done song. We don't get vocals until almost 4 minutes in. "This Fragile Surface" has keyboard melodies all through it and lots of tempo changes as well.

Good album but I don't think i'd recommend it when there is so much good Prog-Metal out there that is much better than this one.

Powerful power metal band, Andromeda was always a band sitting in my library collecting dust. Till one day I decided to give them a listen. And I'd have to say that I was impressed with what I heard for the raw metal and harsh vocals. II=I is a great album with some really good songs. Such as Encyclopedia (4 of 5), Two Is One (4), Cast Away (4) and of all my favorite Mirages (5). However, the rest of the songs were decent (3), and the song One in My Head (2) was one song I couldn't enjoy. All together this talented heavy metal band released album I would label as Okay, a good addition but not an urgent addition to ones collection. With some really good piano, they just have awkward shifts and some less that desirable moments in their songs in my opinion. I haven't heard their other albums, but I understand Extension of a Wish is brilliant. For this one I'd have to give it a 3 out of 5 star rating as good but not great. It has Mirages which is an incredible song, and Two Is one, Which is also a good progressive song. But for the rest they seemed like typical power-metal songs that I had troubles loving, let alone liking. Give a listen if you like power metal, but if your looking for something less power-metal-esque there's plenty of other albums.

Encyclopedia (4), Mirages (5), Reaching Down Within (3), Two is One (4), Morphing into Nothing (3), Castaway (4), Parasite (3), One in My Head (2), The Fragile Surface (3) /9 tracks = 3.44 (3 stars)

If well, their first album was a good debut, although not too original. On this two is one there's much more variety, audacity and many refreshing music passages mixed in the exact moment with the right elements. This not means a musical evolution, but it's an important step on the path for getting a real identity as a band (currently many bands have the big challenge to discover and make their own sound) and ANDROMEDA is one of those bands that is doing their job pretty well.

Two is one contains 9 well distributed songs. Tracks like encyclopedia or mirages show a harder rock side, meanwhile castaway could be something like a power ballad on the record. Also there's an instrumental side represented by morphing into nothing, but I think the best part of the album is on the final with the 3 last songs; parasite (Hammond/keyboard bases are incorporated and it sounds really nice!), one in my head and this fragile surface.

In a few words, these Swedish guys have done a good balance between classy music, technique and well done music compositions. Sadly, I think they're very underestimated in the progressive music scene.

By: Epsilon.

Thank God the title of the album is a lie!

After a relatively successful debut, Andromeda 2 years later release a brand new studio album entitled II=I. However, they changed their vocalist and that is a major change for the better, since David Fremberg vocals are better than Lawrence Mackrory to Andromeda's music. I mean, David Fremberg's vocals fit much better in Andromeda's music than Lawrence Mackrory's vocals, what is ultimately proven when they re-release their debut with Fremberg singing. Another interesting change is that their original bass players is also gone and, because of that, their guitarist Johan Reinholdz played the bass at the recording sessions. The result was very good, but Johan Reinholdz would still be the band's guitarist, after they found the new bass player, which is Fabian Gustavsson now.

Anyway, in Two is One Andromeda present themselves in a much darker mood than the one seen in Extension of the Wish. The songs are still played on the frantic speed they were on the debut, but now they (at least most of them) sound heavier and are in minor scales, what is responsible for the darker or sadder mood here. However, they still have some nice soft songs here, like Two is One and Castaway.

About the songs, musicianship and other features, there are some things i would like to state:

Andromeda's main characteristic is most certainly their incredible instrumental work, specially the guitars and the keyboards / pianos, and this albums shows it perfectly. From the incredible opening of Encyclopedia till This Fragile Surface both the guitars and the keyboards are blasting and the drums make it very round, smooth and complete. However, the musicianship of all players is incredible, in a positive way.

The highlights are: Encyclopedia (one of their best songs ever), Mirages, Two Is One, Morphing Into Nothing, One in my Head and This Fragile Surface.

Grade and Final Thoughts

With a new vocalist, Andromeda definitely reached the next level here, making music that is worthy to be considered and respected in the progressive metal scene. This album is all good, having no bad songs in my opinion, with some considerable highlights. Because of that this album deserves 4 stars.

Andromeda second release from 2003 was a pleasent surprise for me from the biggining 3 years ago. This swedish prog metal band did a great job here mixing Dream Theater elements with groovy and intrsting arrangemets. I like this kind of prog metal up tempo, fast , slow depends how the mood changes, everything on this second release named II=I is a winner to my ears. Ok the influences are obvious taken from DT but they have also some personality in their work here aswell. LIke very much what the keyboard player Marin Hedin done here, really, something great in full of excellent chops, not to mention the drumer who is very sure of his instrument and created a real solit shythm section with the bass player, great. The voice is a new one on this album face the previous one the debute. I don't know the first album, but the voice of David Fremberg is good and fits very well here. This album has everything to become a great release in the future, complexity, progressive metal that pleases every fan, me included. Every single piece is great, showing that Andromeda is a force in this subgenre, not only followers , but real progressive metal band with talented musicians. 3.5 rounded to 4 .Still the instrumental one Morphing Into Nothing and Encyclopedia are real killers.Looking forward for another album to listen .

You know a band has its work cut out for them when their first album is considered a masterpiece (in my eyes, anyway). With their debut, 'Extension of the Wish' being one of my all-time favourite records, Andromeda sure have their backs against the wall. And while 'II = I' (that's, "two is one"), doesn't quite match the quality of its predecessor, it more than stands on its own two feet as a worthy follow-up.

One of the main differences between the two albums is that with 'II = I' everyone collaborated together and shared writing credits, as opposed to the previous record which was written entirely by guitarist Johan Reinholdz. It shows a band that has bonded and formed a great chemistry amongst themselves, with the results being a more polished and well-rounded release.

As is always the case with progressive metal groups, the musicianship is impeccable, with each member being a true master of their respective instrument. How these guys are not the successor to Dream Theater's throne will baffle me until my dying days.

Unfortunately, there are a few fairly dull and lackluster moments, which prevent this release from achieving the same five-star rating as 'Extension...'. Songs like 'Mirages', 'Reaching Deep Within' and the title track are some of Andromeda's finest, and a great representation of what this genre has to offer. Sadly, the last few tracks seem to fall flat at times. They're not terrible, but it definitely sounds like all the best ideas were used up earlier.

Don't be deterred, however, as this is still a great album, and while it may not be as good as its predecessor, this certainly should not be seen as a step back for a band that are still evolving and developing.