THE INNER CIRCLE

After the slightly shaky Recreation Day, Evergrey firmed up their sound again with The Inner Circle. Once again it's a concept album, this time based around the thin line between conventional religious practices and cultish manipulation, and how sects which theologically try to wall off their followers from the outside world can create an environment in which all sorts of abuses can take place.

The idea offers some obvious thematic connections with In Search of Truth - in the sense that both concepts revolve around conspiracies that cover for abusive actions, although where the former is fantastical and unlikely, the latter is unfortunately an all too real phenomenon, as illustrated by incidents like the conviction of Warren Jeffs. Likewise, whereas In Search of Truth had spoken word bits from the point of view of an abductee, here we have various spoken word extracts from the sermons of various religious leaders, some of whom seem overcome with grief.

So, structurally then what we are dealing with is an album which feels a lot like a sequel to In Search of Truth, and musically we're in the same general area too. On the whole, I think it's no embarrassment to its predecessor, and is certainly a better followup than Recreation Day, but I don't think it's quite on the same level - say, about a half-star difference between them.