PARADISE LOST

5 years on from the hugely disappointing The Odyssey, Symphony X return with an album that took them 4 of those years to produce and one things for certain, it was worth the wait. Two things immediately strike me, the first is that this album now only has much less of a prog feel to it, they're not setting it out quite along the old lines of The Divine Wings of Tragedy and tightening up every aspect of the composition. The result is a very focused album with progressive leanings but mostly in the power metal style and much heavier than previous albums. The second major change is that bass player Michael Le Pond has spent the intervening time finding some serious inspiration (as well as fighting Crohns disease) as he offers up the single biggest improvement in performance from any of the bands members. An impressive turnaround from the lackluster showing he gave on The Odyssey. This isn't quite the album I was hopping from them, my wishes went more along the lines of having branch out into something new rather than improving on what they have already done, and as a result there are a few moments that I don't like that are clear hangovers from their past. Usually, when they bass a song/album of someone else's written work, they completely avoid the problem of cheesy lyrics but they don't seem to have been able to do that here. The worst offender is The Walls of Babylon, which would have made an impressive instrumental anyway. A very strong album, up there with The Divine Wings of Tragedy and V, but not a masterpiece.