TRAUMATIZED

"Traumatized" is the debut full-length studio album by US, California based progressive rock act Puppet Show. The album was originally independently released in 1997 but was picked up for a label release by Kinesis in 1998.

Stylistically this is symphonic progressive rock with neo-progressive leanings. It´s the usual suspects in Genesis and Marillion who are probably the biggest sources of inspiration for Puppet Show and lead vocalist Sean Frazier (although a bit more screaming and strained in his delivery) tries to hit the Peter Gabriel/Fish way of singing. The songs on the 6 track, 55:28 minutes long album are generally pretty long and it´s not songwriting ideas that Puppet Show are lacking. They deliver both complex instrumental parts, atmospheric melancholic parts, and hard rocking parts with omnipresent use of keyboards.

So "Traumatized" is a decent release regarding songwriting and the performances (although I have a problem with the strained delivery of the vocalist), but the sound production seriously drags the album down. This is a homemade lo-fi sounding production job if I ever heard one. It´s not terrible sounding and you can hear all details, but the instruments and the vocals aren´t placed that well in the mix, and the tone of the instruments and the effects on the vocals, just don´t sound that great. As a consequence "Traumatized" ends up sounding rather amaturish, although the material actually features quite a few interesting moments. A 2 - 2.5 (45%) rating is warranted.