MUSIC MACHINE

Erik Norlander is doing what he does well. Not super well, but dang well. When I popped this into my player the 1st time, I thought immediately:'This guy's good, but I heard it somewhere...' Yep, I read after that he played for Ayreon many times, and it shows. Good thing though, I always thought that his work with Ayreon was the icing on the cake that made it so memorable. It started pretty well for me.

Then...er...I noticed a very deep foot print of the glam/ neo/ metal of the 80's (again?! What's with that decade?). While my teeth grinded, I also read so collaboration with chubby fingers Yngwie and I understood the course it would take. Okay, alright. And then I heard the lyrics, and I didn't know if I had to laugh or cry. I chose laughing for your information, but I did appreciate the music a lot.

Norlander writes very cheesy lyrics, really man (Beware the Vampires, Music Machine, Johnny America and it goes on and on...), okay I can deal with that. Know why? Because he's not the only one (Ayreon, Spock's Beard, Par Linhd Project, Shadow Gallery). So in this case, the best thing to do is to focus on the music, shall we?

The music is good for metal and pompous gothic keyboard lovers, and even sometimes quite good, but unfortunetaly never topping the kings of metal operas (Nightwish, Ayreon, Within Temptation). But being second fiddle in this case still means lots of speed metal solos (eh..) and some of the best keyboard fireworks in the buisness. This guy's mean serious buisness on the synths! No kidding, he shreds his Korg Triton like Malmsteem does it on the Fender Strat! Chicks dig out the finger calluses, right?

The album suffers and benefits the same thing: it's lenght. It's long enough to find some annoying filling but it's also long enough to create reliable material and memorable tunes or keyboard solos. So you have to press skip sometimes, but there's enough stuff in it to find something you'll like quite often.

Amateurs of DragonForce will appreciate.

3.5 stars

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