PROTOMYTHOS

"Walking the Plank" has a nice solid beat and guitar opening that has a dark edge to it, that resides in the same vein of dark sound and heavy guitar prog of Porcupine Tree and Dream Theater, with decent vocals. This is a great rousing opening. "Bury Your Head" opens with drums and moves on with the dark and heavy guitar style driving the music. The music softens as the vocals start, but intensify on the chorus. The approach to the instrumental break lets you know that something good is coming, and it does. The vocals almost remind me a bit of Devin Townsend, but without the extremities. This is another great track with lots of power.

"Evolve" begins with dark synths and a churning guitar. The tempo is slower here, but the mood is still dark and heavy. At the end, you can hear a bit of the Israeli influence in the guitar and the cool keyboard riff. "Fragile Fallacy" retains the dark feel, but is quite a bit softer and accessible. The vocals come across a bit weaker on the verses and the overall feel has less impact as previous tracks. "Bitter Truth" moves to a slow march rhythm with a bit more intensity that the previous track, and in this case, is a good thing as the vocals are stronger. There are some dark harmonies in the layered vocals and the keys are well utilized here to help generate the intensity. There is also an impressive, melodic guitar solo in the instrumental break and at the end.

"Flip of a Coin" gets the fast tempo going again in a return to the heavy feel of the first tracks. After a few verses, the rhythm and tempo changes to a more solid beat. I find the vocal melody of this one less interesting, but the music itself is great, heavy and has progressive leanings. "The Candle" starts off seeming a bit pretentious, but it has a promising sounding middle section and ending.

The longest track is saved until last. "A Shadow Play" gets going with some heavy riffs and progressive leanings. The instrumental sections are blistering, hot progressive rock. At the 3:30 mark, things calm quite a bit with an acoustic guitar and vocals, this time the softer part doesn't sound weak like before and the nice guitar solo here makes it even more interesting. Soon, the heavy section returns, as expected. The heavy and soft sections on this track are effective and keep things interesting.

This is a decent album, and for the most part, is a heavy and dark affair. There are two tracks that weaken the album, namely "Fragile Fallacy" and "The Candle", but at least the latter one has some great instrumental sections. I found myself wishing that some of the instrumental sections were a bit longer and that there was more progressive-ness present, but it is still an excellent album and those that like their prog on the heavy side will enjoy this one.

The debut album of the Israeli band Protomythos comes across as a compelling production that should have a fairly broad potential audience, with music that without ever being truly comparable to either of them still manages to conjure associations to the likes of Pink Floyd, Porcupine Tree and late 80's Rush, with a fair degree of additional familiar sounding elements having an origin in music of a more mainstream orientation. It is a likeable and well made production on just about all levels, although the concept explored may put some people off. Still, if you enjoy well made, accessible progressive rock in general this is a CD worth taking a look at.

The first thing that called my attention was the really clever cover of the album by the artist Steven Kenny. It portraits a man using a halter that is used usually on horses, but on the album cover butcher's knives are used near the eyes.

The album starts with 'In Human Sight', the title-track. It has a riff that is kinda familiar and the guitar in the background has Alan Parsons Project influence. The transition to the second track 'Cage Bound' is made of some conversations and animal noises, which will be repeated throughout the album. When the new song kicks in it's completely different from the instrumental opener track. It's slower and more like a Rock ballad than Prog Rock. 'House Of Slaughter' is a darker piece of music and Tom's vocals and lyrics reflect that.

By the time of 'Inside A Square' even if the music is interesting and very well written, one starts to wonder about Tom Treivish ideas. I'll not go into details if I agree or not with him and why, but it's hard to just focus on the music when he wants to state his visions so strongly with the lyrics, almost to the point of preaching. The music kinda goes to a second plane on In Human Sights (2013).

'The Blind Spot' follows the slower tempo songs but the following track 'Condiments And Blood' is almost an Electronic Rock piece and is lost in the overall feeling of the album. Then 'Science Moved On' comes along with its great atmospheric intro, probably the best track on the album. 'Part Of The Fold' is another very good track that resembles Green Violinist's sound.

The last two tracks on In Human Sight (2013) are 'We Bleed For Real' and 'Voiceless'. The first is more modern and doesn't have much Prog in it with its sleepy drum line (by Ethan Raz). The second is more atmospheric but still, more of a Rock ballad very well played than Prog, special mention to bass player Adi Har Zvi on this last song. The last song also has some Anathema influence on it.

ProtoMythos (and Tom Treivish) is a band with a vision. It's well written music and very well recorded and produced by Tom itself and Noam Akrabi. But when it comes to Progressive Rock it lacks some more depth, it lacks some daring moments I would say. Most of the time the album fells on the old scheme verse-chorus-verse. Now about the concept and lyrics, even if it's a nice thing to have someone speaking his heart out and trying to voice out his ideas, especially in our soulless days music, it's hard to listen to In Human Sight (2013) if you don't actually agree with everything that's been saying in the songs.

I would suggest it to people that share the same vision as Tom's. For those that don't share the same point of view it's like forcing ideas into their heads, it's like preaching. And nobody likes preaching!

(Originally posted on progshine.net)