TYRANNY OF THERAPY

Welcome to one of the best debuts of 2007. Division By Zero is an obscure progressive metal band from Poland that equally deserves every inch of praise that is now solely bestowed on their fellow country men from Riverside.

Before I start throwing references to other bands at you, I can assure you that this band has a very mature and personal sound. They have accomplished the task to assimilate their influences very well indeed. If you have read any reviews about them, you will have seen names like Opeth, Pain of Salvation and Riverside. All of those are true.

From Riverside they got the feel for melody, the clean sound and the emotive melancholy. From POS and Opeth in particular, they got the ambitious song structures with alternating gruff and clean vocals. Of course, every metal band does that now and it has become as annoying as it is predictable and worn-out. With Division By Zero it works very well though. The singer's gruff voice is very similar to Akerfelt's low register and only used sparingly. The prominent clean vocals are exceptionally strong and have a huge Mike Patton calibre.

Yes indeed, I need to add another reference here. And to me it's the most obvious reference of all: Faith No More. Let's take the 6th track Deadline Meeting as an example, right from the start it screams "Real Thing" Faith No More at you: the dead-catchy thrash metal riffs, the epic keyboards in the background, the adventurous song structures and, as I've come to mention, especially Slawek Wierny's exceptional vocals. Just listen, 2 minutes into the song, how he bends his voice around the metal riffs. You can't get more Patton then that.

To conclude the list of influences I must add that Division By Zero throws in occasional touches of gothic rock to their Faith No More meets Opeth stew. The dark feel of the album brings Evergrey to mind, and given the spooky short spoken interludes, especially the album In Search Of Truth.

I know I may be a bit biased (in the positive sense) to this mix of heartfelt progressive metal with a slightly gothic flavour, so a big 4 stars will be their share. If you are into the 4 bands in bold here, chances are big that Division By Zero might be a band for you.

I so much hope they can confirm and break through to wider audiences with a next album. Let's also hope they find a more inspired album cover artist. I think we've seen this artwork at least a dozen times before. And it doesn't fit the music at all.

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