FORCES OF NATURE

I'm a Vitalij Kuprij fan, so I went to see what he did before his solo career. This album has been my first opportunity to listen to Artension. Being Vitalij a so skilled performer, I would have expected a keyboard-driven group, but what I have found is a band of extremely skilled musicians able to demonstrate all their skill in a short 3 minutes track.

In fact, Wild Trip in less than 4 minutes contains excellent shots of drums, classical guitar and bass other than keyboards. This is the track I've remained impressed of.

The rest of the album contains melodic parts mixed with classic Metal. All the tracks are very enjoyable and easy also for ears not familiar with this genre, so I think that, unlike Vitalij's solo works, this prog-metal is more prog- than metal-oriented.

John West's voice is a typical metal voice. So typical that it looks like he came directly from the 80s. What is very nice is the contamination. The coda of Guardian of the Hunt, played by synh piano and classical guitar is classic rock and could compete with some of our beloved dynosaurs. Anoter outstanding song is "Behind Your Eyes" which features a more usual (today) version of Vitakij's keyboard.

It's 3.5, but it made me wish to try other stuff of Artension, so I round it to 4.