FORCES OF NATURE

Artension third album entitled Forces of nature from 1999 is again a good album , but the shining moments from previous work are in less quantity now, leaving space to a more mainstream sound, but don't expect to something comercial, it's only less intristing than Phoenix rising and also less great than Sacred pathways from 2000. The music reaches influences from Malmsteen, Rainbow even Deep Purple with some neoclasical prog metal aproach, not bad at all but not something special either. Also Artension is toying with heavy-power elements in places not only prog metal, that gives other dimension to the album. The best of what I can extract from here are again the fantstic duels between guitar of Roger Staffelback and keys Vitalij Kuprij, and the excellent voice of West great musicians, very skilful instruental passages, and musicianship is tight , but as I said as whole the album is little less enjoyble than the prior one. Terrana is now gone to play drums with Rage, but he will come back next year to do the work with Artension since the last albu from 2005. The best pieces are Lost Horizon - simply great are the vocal arrangements here, great and very powerfull voice has this John West (remind me in places with John Lynn Turner, but more rough in places), Shape shifter and Tall ship - on both pieces is invited another legend among guitarist the famos Jamas Murphy from Obituary, Death fame and colaborations with many bands and aswell solo career. So I will give to forcess of nature 3 stars, a good one, but nothing realy special, but worth some spins from time to time. The prior one Phoenix rising was and is to me much better.

I'm a Vitalij Kuprij fan, so I went to see what he did before his solo career. This album has been my first opportunity to listen to Artension. Being Vitalij a so skilled performer, I would have expected a keyboard-driven group, but what I have found is a band of extremely skilled musicians able to demonstrate all their skill in a short 3 minutes track.

In fact, Wild Trip in less than 4 minutes contains excellent shots of drums, classical guitar and bass other than keyboards. This is the track I've remained impressed of.

The rest of the album contains melodic parts mixed with classic Metal. All the tracks are very enjoyable and easy also for ears not familiar with this genre, so I think that, unlike Vitalij's solo works, this prog-metal is more prog- than metal-oriented.

John West's voice is a typical metal voice. So typical that it looks like he came directly from the 80s. What is very nice is the contamination. The coda of Guardian of the Hunt, played by synh piano and classical guitar is classic rock and could compete with some of our beloved dynosaurs. Anoter outstanding song is "Behind Your Eyes" which features a more usual (today) version of Vitakij's keyboard.

It's 3.5, but it made me wish to try other stuff of Artension, so I round it to 4.