SHIFTING THE EQUILIBRIUM

US band UNIFIED PAST has a history that can be traced back to 1990, and a band then called Labyrinth. This precursor unit released three albums. The main members then formed Unified Past towards the tail end of the '90s, and have so far released 5 studio albums, as well as reissuing two of the Labyrinth CDs under this new name. "Shifting the Equilibrium" is their latest studio production, and was released through the US label Melodic Revolution Records.

Unified Past has taken a long step forward with their new album "Shifting the Equilibrium", almost coming across as a brand new band, and most certainly vitalized, the current line-up appears to have inspired all involved people to reach a new level in their respective contributions. A solid album on all levels, and Yes fans that are also fond of music with more of a bite to it are well advised to give this one a spin. As are Dream Theater fans that tend to enjoy vintage-style progressive rock, and then from one band in particular.

UNIFIED PAST is a U.S. progressive metal band formed back in 1999. Prior to that, they activated from early '80 under the name LABYRINTH. The album "Shifting The Equilibrium" is the 7th release of this band. UNIFIED PAST is our days YES, or if you like better, is a progressive metal YES. But this band is much more than that. Much more indeed. These guys combine vintage prog rock sound with more actual prog sounds in a very beautiful and somehow intriguing way. The playing style is very modern and accurate. All songs are very good and can compete with any progressive metal classics. In the same note is this album production and mixing. I don't have anything but good feelings and words about this beautiful release. This band deserves much more in the future. I think with the right management and many live shows, this boys can climb into progressive metal arena. I sure hope so because they deserve this. Better said: We deserve this!

The album artwork is very beautiful and very professional made and will be in my personal CD collection for sure. The main reasons for that: very good quality of music, artwork and musicianship.

That's all for today! Thank you!

STYLE Powerful progressive rock. Shifting The Equilibrium is a sharp, tight album of gutsy tracks delivered with bright, dynamism and impressive technical mastery. At their best on the longest of tracks when the band break most strikingly into the arrangements with structural variations and acoustic interludes; Unified Past combine heavy riffs, symphonic synths and a huge, confident, driving rhythm section. Although there are solo sections, the band for the most part plays as an intertwined whole: fast guitar licks, deft keyboard fingerwork and heaving bass layering into a dense, vibrant tapestry. There is one instrumental - Deviation From A Theme (Of Harmonic Origin) - among the songs, an evolving piece of appealing character where the guitar work really shines. Otherwise Phil Naro's sinewy vocals cut distinctively through the mix despite the intensity of the instrumentation: commanding and vital; energetic and certain. Time signatures and rhythms shift so effortlessly that it's easy to miss just how much is going in with some of the pieces here, drawing on the whole range of the progressive genre from its inception nearly fifty years back. There is a clear sense of musical quality to Shifting The Equilibrium that rewards headphone listening and full attention. ARTWORK A glossy digipack holds Shifting The Equilibrium; alive with complex detail and colourful imagery. A muscle-map figure kneels on the front cover astride a skull carving surrounded by a dizzying tangle of synthetic/organic interconnections. Opening out into three sections, the rear cover presents track titles beneath the gaze of a dusky monochrome close-up of the cover figure. A band portrait fills the third outer panel and a broad fiery panorama extend across the inside spread. Brief credits are here as well as website details and contact information. Pleasingly, a twelve-page booklet is tucked into one end of the sleeve packed with lyrics, individual portraits and generous thanks. OVERALL Unified Past deliver Shifting the Equilibrium as their seventh release, having been around in different guises since the early nineties. As with the last couple of albums, the band work here with Melodic Revolution Records, but the addition of Phil Naro appears to have opened some interesting new sonic vistas for guitarist/keyboardist Stephen Speelman, bassist Dave Mickelson and drummer Victor Tassone. The six recordings are all mid-length, from around eight minutes to around twelve allowing the quartet plenty of room for manoeuvre and experimentation. You can sample the album via the MMR Bandcamp page for the release or you might want to view some of the videos found on the official Unified Past website where you can also find links to follow relevant news outlets.

On the day that guitarist and keyboardist Stephen Speelman asked us whether it is true he looked like Yanni in the 90's, it's time for me to fill ina promise: the promise to review the latest album of his band Unified Past. The band I had heard about long ago, but I never really listened to their music until this album came out. Mainly due to the fact that they are classified as progressive metal, and I've not been interested in metal for a number of years. That changes every couple of years, and so also now).

On this album, Speelman is accompanied by bass player Dave Mickelson, who's rattling strings might have been a bit more up front in the mix, drummer Victor Tassone and vocalist Phil Naro. The latter two I also know from projects like Andy John Bradford's Ocean's 5 and Corvus Stone, which are musically quite different from Unified Past.

The music of Unified Past certainly isn't the kind of sky rocketing freak metal as we find for example on the albums of bands like Dream Theater in the last 10-15 years. Instead it's more a mix of 90's and 00's metal, with the keyboards and guitar tunes playing an important role - making it all quite nicely bombastic at times.

Instrumentally, the band is as capable as vocal chameleon Phil Naro is on vocals (check his other projects and random Youtube videos to see what I mean), and as tight as 1980s hardrock skinnies. I haven't tried to count, but I doubt there is a lot of 4/4 beat going on on this album, tempos change every time, and it's hard to spot mistakes.

My favourite track is impossile to identify, every track on the album has its own strengths. I love the keyboards on Smile, despite not being a big keyboard fan, and the vocals on Edged In Stone give me goose bumps. Peace Remains in this World could've been a hard rock classic from the 80s yet doesn't sound dated at all, and Deviation from a Theme is a wonderfully built up instrumental - this time not going from small to big, but rather the other way round - with a shiver inducing guitar solo near the end.

The only issue I may have with the album is that the sound is quite dense, a little more dynamics would've been nice - even if this is classified as metal (the dynamic range meter gave a level of 6 as explanation)

Definitely recommended - and rock enough to also appeal to those who are not into full on metal.

Also published on my blog www.angelosrockorphanage.com

Unified Past have been around since 1999 and have released several albums, most of them since 2008. This most recent release of theirs, 2015's "Shifting the Equilibrium", introduces vocalist Phil Naro in the line-up. Naro has been active in the music business since he was a member of Talas some decades ago and can be heard on albums by Druckfarben, D-Drive and Corvus Stone to name a few.

I'm not familiar with any of Unified Past's previous albums, but it was my appreciation for Naro's vocals that led me to check out this album.

To sum it up, there's a lot of music going on here. There's a very full sound with lots of keyboards and heavy guitar, bass and drums, and of course the vocals. The music is intricate and complex, it has some great vocal lines and melodies but keeps you guessing often. It's like symphonic heavy metal but with a positive vibe like Yes and Glass Hammer. In fact, Naro's vocals make for an excellent metal counterpart to Jon Anderson's.

It's not just the song-writing and music composition but also the sound and use of the instruments. The bass comes in clunky and chunky at times and other times low and warm. The keyboards include some classically-influenced passages. The guitars stay mostly heavy with an excellent choice in distortion settings and yet because of the rich keyboard presence, the album does not have a real metal feel to it most of the time. The music keeps moving and changing, never easing back and resting, never going for 5-minute atmospheric passages. Even when the acoustic guitar comes in, it's mostly more to contribute to the overall sonic palette of the song and ease off the intensity and not to specifically establish an acoustic guitar interlude. I would note though that once or twice I felt the acoustic guitar lacked impact perhaps because this album's production leans more toward the loud and sonorously rich side. At times I wonder with so much going on in the music what does the vocalist have to do?

But Phil Naro contributes a great deal to the songs on which he sings ("Deviation from a Theme" is an instrumental). His voice is powerful and emotion-packed. Catch that "Won't Get Fooled Again" scream in "Smile (in the Face of Adversity)".

If there's anything to say that's not heaping praise, it's that with all that's going on in each song, it's not easy to single out any particular favourites. "Etched in Stone" and "Smile" appear mention in my notes at least twice each, so maybe I picked out parts of those most often. But in the end it's just a musical ride from start to finish. Initially, I also had a bit of a quibble about the production, wondering if the dynamic range hadn't suffered a bit as there was a certain flatness, I felt. But on my latest listen through in reparation for this review I didn't feel the sound quality had suffered so noticeably.

This is easily a three or four star album and I'll give it four!

I would suppose that the meaning of Unified Past is up for interpretation. To me I see four journeyman musicians who have brought their collective talents and influences to the world of progressive rock. In 2015 they release their new offering titled Shifting The Equilibrium on Melodic Revolution Records. From my observation I see four guys who have brought a little bit of every decade of progressive rock in the last 45 years and put it on one recording. When Stephen Speelman - Guitars, and I first made arrangements to get me a copy of CD to review, I honestly did not know what I was in for. After the first spin all the way through, I was very impressed. I can see why such respected publications such as Reuters, Yahoo News, Boston Globe and Bloomberg News has given this high regard. To top that off they also have received a huge billboard of advertising in Times Square in New York City. This praise has been well warranted. I have appreciated the originality of this project both instrumentally and lyrically. This is straight up pure power progressive rock that reminds me of the days of RUSH's Farewell To Kings, Hemispheres or 2112 to Emerson Lake and Palmer to even non progressive styles like Zebra and Triumph. There are 6 very different yet elegantly arranged tracks on Shifting The Equilibrium that clock in at a total of 56+ minutes. I will point of some highlights of each track on the album. Erasure Principle opens up with a great percussive intro with the cymbals playing a surround mix for the listener followed by a bass drum. Soon after the track takes a crunchy progression with a hard driving rhythm guitar before being followed up by the rest of the rhythmic section. The guitar deviates to some lead to rhythm interchanged before a very clean harmonic vocal from Phil Naro comes into play. Phil Naro's voice reminds me of a mix of one part Randy Jackson from Zebra meets one part Rik Emmett from Triumph and a final part Jon Anderson of Yes. Erasure Principle has a nice continuity of progression with various rhythmic sections, guitar solo's and neo progressive synths all interchanging at various signatures. Smile (In The Face Of Diversity) starts with a thunderous rhythm section and neo progressive synth in abstract harmony with one anther before settling in at the :50 mark. At the 1:29 mark the track takes a more traditional progressive metal approach much in the fusion area of say a Derek Sherinian with Planet X. This is also driven with great progressive keyboards driving the backbone. There are some proper breaks where the keyboard creates a great atmosphere for a isoalted vocal harmony before going back to straight away progressive rock time stamps. At the 5:29 mark Phil displays some semi melodic semi spoken word vocal styles. Stephen Speelman has some very tight solo's exchanging with rhythm portions. Etched In Stone begins with a electric acoustical guitar passage in harmony with the synth and midi programming. Once again the band employs a nice break where the vocals are isolated in harmony with the instrumental. The track takes on a good solid signature instrumentally to build harmony and melody on top one another. At the 3:00 mark the signatures going in and out wicked some very deep bottom bass progressions and guitar solo's. The vocal atmospheres get really tight on point in Etched In Stone. This is also a track that is a delight for the rhythm enthusiast with great tight drum bass harmonies. That is also with a perfect compliment from the stringed section between guitar and synths. At about the 6:45 mark the synth provides a flute like signature as a great harmonic melodic bridge. Peace Remains In This World opens up with a straight up power progressive passage of emotion that drives the lyrical content for the listener to follow in a groove laden manner. There is some great exchanges between the main rhythmic progression and guitar solo's that are really catchy. At times the track takes a semi pop sensibility. This is probably the heaviest track on Shifting The Equilibrium. Deviation From A Theme (Of Harmonic Origin) starts out with a power progressive fury. The band have definitely found their niche and identity on this one. This has some sick wicked straight away rock parts that break from time to time into a more lucid signature. There are big solo's and heavier bass to drum progressions. The guitar takes on effects as if speaking from time to time. The guitar in this reminds me a lot of Dave Bainbridge of IONA meets John Petrucci of Dream Theater. Deviation From A Theme (Of Harmonic Origin) is the only instrumental on the album that displays the band's instrumental prowess. Today Is The Day starts out with a very old school progressive psychedelic vibe much like Yes' Tales Of Topographic Oceans with some Sieges Even and Dream Theater combined elements. The keyboard atmospheres and rhythm atmospheres really gel in a tighten groove on this one. The lyrical content is one definitely influenced by Yes to Genesis. There seems to be a different instrumental with each verse and bridge at times having surround effects. In its 11:51 entirety, Today Is The Day has enough time signatures and progressions giving the listener the appearance the track is a 15:00 to 20:00 epic. Unified Past's Shifting The Equilibrium is on the edge of the evolution of cerebral progressive rock. Unified Past puts on both a instrumental and vocal harmonic clinic for how progressive rock is to be written, recorded, engineered and mastered. I can not wait to hear some of this in a live atmosphere. I give this a 5/5 for its spot on accuracy and thought provoking progressions.