THE GREAT DIVIDE

The US band ICE AGE was founded in 1993. This is their promising debut album. ICE AGE is impressive musicians and the music contains heavy riffing, great memorable melodies and a lot of complexity. Their music is somewhere between very heavy melodic progressive rock and progressive metal with many changing time signatures and great arrangements. Their influences are BLACK SABBATH, DEEP PURPLE, KANSAS, PINK FLOYD, RUSH and YES. They're also sometimes reminiscent to EMERSON, LAKE & PALMER, JOURNEY and QUEENSRYCHE, but most of all do they remind of DREAM THEATER ca. "Awake". The vocalist Josh Pincus is somewhat reminiscent to Steve Walsh of KANSAS, but only a little. He's very skilled and has a powerful voice, but it's quite unusual, but after a while you'll get used to him. The guitarist Jimmy Pappas is very good and the rhythm section is excellent. Jimmy is actually one of the better guitarists I've heard in the prog metal genre. The highlights are "Perpetual Child", "Sleepwalker", the instrumental "Spare Chicken Parts" that contains a very good drum solo, "The Bottom Line", my favorite "Ice Age" that is over 11 minutes, "One Look Away" and "To Say Goodbye". It's actually the two instrumentals that are the best tracks. A good thing about the songs is the catchy and memorable choruses. The guitarist Jimmy Pappas designed the beautiful cover image. It would surely be nice to hear what they can achieve with their next album. Considering that this is a debut album it's very convincing. I'm sure that ICE AGE has a very bright future, but it's with a slight hesitation I give this CD a four star rating (out of 5). But after all this is an outstanding album that probably will end up as one of the highlights of prog metal in 1999, so buy and enjoy!