A BLUEPRINT OF THE WORLD

The music on the album is soft edged/melodic progressive rock/metal with neo progressive rock leanings. Ted Leonard´s strong vocals and melodic vocal lines are the center of attention, but Douglas A Ott´s also gets his time in the spotlight with some really well played and melodic guitar soloing. It´s all accompagnied by an omnipresence of keyboards/synths played by Michael Benignus Geimer and a rather busy and accomplished rythm section in drummer Paul Craddick and bassist Ed Platt.

To my ears tracks like "The Thirst", "Catharsis" and "At Death's Door" have always stood as the strongest and most memorable tracks on "A Blueprint Of The World", but the instrumental "Mae Dae" also feature some beautiful parts. The rest of the tracks (maybe except for the rather cheesy sounding "Acquaintance", which doesn´t stand out for something positive) have never stood out to me. They´re all decent, but not that memorable.

The musicianship is solid and it´s especially enjoyable to lay ears to Paul Craddick´s busy drumming but lead vocalist Ted Leonard needs a special mention too for his emotional performance. Unfortunately some of the vocal lines are not that memorable though and he is occasionally forced to sing some notes that are on the edge of his capability. He sounds uncomfortable and strained. That´s seldom a good idea and it´s something they avoided on later more mature releases.

"A Blueprint Of The World" is partially produced by Steve Rothery (Marillion) who is credited for producing half of the tracks on the album. The rest are produced by Douglas A Ott. I don´t know the story behind this but my guess is that there was some sort of dissagreement between the band and Steve Rothery half way through the recording of the album or maybe a money issue. Regardless the result isn´t satisfying to my ears. Neither the Steve Rothery nor the Douglas A Ott produced tracks feature what I would call a professional sound production.

Despite some of the issues mentioned above I still think "A Blueprint Of The World" is a pretty good progressive rock/metal album. A 3 star (60%) rating is warranted.

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