MANIFEST TYRANNY

Gonna be real honest here, the first thing I asked upon listening to Andromeda's latest release "Manifest Tyranny" was, "Is this supposed to be good?". Being what I would call a lifelong heavy metal fan (So long as we can start my "life" in high school when I started listen to music at all), I've had to really get used to some downright awful lyrics. What has always been a saving grace is that usually I can move past them and really focus in on great riffs and great music. First of all though, Andromeda seems completely unaware that they sound like immature kids, and they are SO loud about it. The "Concept" of this album can't just be filed away and ignored. Because: The entire thing is overloaded with "Voice overdubs". Seriously, these things suck. I wasn't that big of a fan when DT used them in "The Great Debate", and so Andromeda decided to base an entire album around them doesn't make me warm and fuzzy either.

Even outside of that though, there's nothing of any value. Calling this "Progressive" is akin to taking a worthless Indie-Rock band and calling them "Alternative" because there's else to do with them. I guess they use a lot of keyboards, and there is a surplus of? odd rhythms? I can't say enough for how bad this concept is. I get that maybe you feel like some super cool social warrior by blaring around all these voice clips, but the whole thing sounds awful. There's really nothing positive I can say about this album other than a few good riffs, and some occasional parts that are mediocre enough to not make me want to immediately hit skip, but these are short lived. If you feel really compelled to understand the experience of listening to "Manifest Tyranny", grab some demos from a second rate prog metal band and play them over conspiracy theory videos on Youtube.

The music is disorganized. It severely lacks any riffs or cohesiveness of songs. The entire album is dragged down by a mass of voiceovers that provide no musical value, and only serve to make the songs more bland. The whole thing is just messy and difficult to listen to. I wouldn't recommend this to fans of any genre, because even though music is a personal statement, it has to be a personal statement through some form of enjoyable melody, otherwise you might as well write an essay. Maybe Andromeda wants to get politically active, but they've got a lot of maturing to do before people take that aspect seriously.

~Dagg (www.blackwindmetal.com)