INSOMNIA

Hailing from Poland, It's.True.Mentality is a relatively young band; formed as late as 2005. They made a 7-track demo just after hooking up; and then several line-up changes occured before the band stabilized. "Insomnia" is their first effort following this, a 5-track EP (or mini-album, depending on point of view).

After the short opening track, with some passages reminding quite a bit of Metallica at times, 4 longer escapades follow. As with the opener these are all instrumental affairs, where the guitar is the key feature of the sound this act has chosen to follow. Rather less distorted and downtuned than many other acts within the progressive metal genre, wandering mellow guitar patterns, toned down staccato riffs and riff patterns are blended nicely and invitingly with melodic guitar passages and soloing - albeit with less of this latter aspect than one might expect.

Synths and organs provide some neat additional features, where especially the latter adds a vintage art rock mood to the explorations - a nice detail which might just give this act an edge in terms of attracting a key fanbase.

And last track Mistificated Paranoia deserves special mentioning; the opening 90 seconds or so with dark, floating synths and percussion conjures an atmosphere pretty similar to the one found on the soundtrack to Twin Peaks (the series, not any of the movies).

Apart from the opening segment of this creation and the opening track I'd think that one of the major influences for this act is Iron Maiden though; where it's the form rather than the overall sound that has taken most ques from this veteran metal act.

The main flaw of this album are predictable compositional evolvements; and also a few transitional passages that comes across as somewhat underdeveloped. When that is said; I'd suspect that there are many who'd most likely take an interest in this band and this particular album. Especially if they are fond of instrumental progressive metal.