AMELIORATE

This is the debut release from this amazing duo that originally wrote music together across a distance and shared it over the internet. Their music has been featured in many video games, in fact 3 of the 4 tracks on this EP are from video games. it is fast moving music, and it is also very complicated, ever changing and ever challenging. It is quite technical as far as the playing goes. The tracks on this EP are quite short, never over 5 minutes, but they would explore more on their future albums.

The band itself is quite unknown, at least at the beginning. They did gain popularity when one of their songs was featured on the Guitar Hero game. They were able to get several fans from that exposure, and the fact that their music is quite difficult to play, even on the game.

The tracks have plenty of dynamic changes, mostly loud, but finding time to include quieter passages from time to time. But nothing remains still or in one place for too long. So, with the excellent playing, where does this EP suffer? Mostly from production, which since this is self released, is not the best, especially for what is demanded from this type of music. The other drawback is that the music changes so much in each track that none of the individual songs have any personality that stands out from the others. There is a lot of sameness in the music.

In my mind, the only thing that really stands out is the track "Sun of Pearl", but that is because I recognize the melody from somewhere, possibly in a game I've played somewhere, and the piano and funky breaks in the song give variation on the melody and gives it a really nice vibe. It always returns to fast drumming and showing off on guitar after each break, but there is always that feeling of hurry and get to the next section. I love the variation they put on the main theme though. Great song, but with a little work, it could be quite amazing. "The Adventures of Jabubu" is the only track not featured on any game. It has a good jazz vibe to it, almost like an Alan Holdsworth tune, but they don't give it much time to develop.

Overall, it seems like they are trying to fit an album's worth of material in 18 minutes. Everything rushes by at breakneck speed. What was needed here was more time to develop ideas and better production. With development, there would have been more variety here. Also, you can't usually expect the best production when a band handles everything on their own, but with a startup band, they did the best they could. This would improve on future albums. However, this is still a fun EP which is over way to quickly. The playing is quite phenomenal and the potential is very apparent. Lovers of Prog Metal should check them out, but be advised that most of their music is instrumental, and every track here is also instrumental.