| CD REVIEW Andromeda |
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Band: Andromeda Would you believe…it’s been 2 ½ years since Sweden’s Progressive Rock/ Metal act Andromeda’s last studio album Chimera (review including short history-of-the-band by yours truly posted 25/07/2006 and still available for your scrutiny – if you’re looking for a more detailed history, check the band’s webpage)? To promote that album, the band set off on the most active live appearance period in their history (live appearances were always somewhat of a rarity, the band concentrating more on festivals), playing a “staggering” (and I use the word jokingly, really) 6 gigs throughout Europe in September 2006. On October 31 the band travelled to Katowice in Poland, where video recordings were undertaken for the release of the band’s Playing Off The Board DVD, released in April 2007. That year, Andromeda’s live activities were restricted to shows at the Sweden Rock and Progpower Scandinavia festivals (respectively in June and November). Work on the new album was apparently already commenced in early January 2007, by the way, and the finished product was already given a North American distribution through specialist label Nightmare Records on September 16, 2008. It was promoted in the US with a duet of gigs, one of which an appearance at Atlanta, Georgia’s Progpower USA IX festival. On October 1st, awarded Canadian film maker Paul Verge premiered his movie The Cause Of Effect – Hijacking Humanity (a critical look at the hidden but true leaders of our societies), to which Andromeda contributed with music. The band’s restricted live promotion of their releases may well be the reason why they are no longer on their previous label (and what with the economy being what it is today, the “bigger” labels prefer to hold onto those bands which don’t need to much investing to develop, you know! Can you blame ‘em that they prefer an easy buck rather than quality music? Damn…here I go shooting off my mouth again!), but no worries, here’s Germany’s Silverwolf Productions to the rescue (they also issue Avian’s new album - another Nightmare Records release - at the same time, by the way!)… According to biography that comes with our promo copy of The Immunity Zone, the new albbum takes off where its predecessor Chimera ended, “…and brings the band in a new chapter…darker and heavier than previous albums, although still maintaining the intricacies, finesse and melodies so characteristic of the band, The Immunity Zone will grow on the listener after each spin…”. Well, for sure the music takes some getting into, and repetitive listening sessions can only help with that! Like always, the guitar work is mainly caracterized by these heavy riffs, which doesn’t mean that JohanReinholdz doesn’t occasionally take up “battle” (actually it’s more off an harmonizing) with keyboardist Martin Hedin, who’s really the musical protagonist (just listen to the music and dare tell me he’s playing a secundary role anywhere on the album, even for only 5 seconds!!!) in the band. Well, the band’s music overall is still mainly vocal-oriented (a couple of very nice 3-voiced passages here and there, by the way), except for the lengthy (17:25 long enough for you?) album closing “Veil Of Illumination”, which has a (very entertaining) 9-minute instrumental passage giving the track an Epic touch. As befitting a good Progressive band, Andromeda knows how to bring variation to their tracks with different moods, giving the album’s shortest tracks “Ghosts On Retinas” and “My Star” (still 4:30 and 5:40 respectively) a Gothic touch, and a blisteringly heavy touch to “Slaves Of The Plethora Season”. Still, there’s always a good deal of melody in both the music and vocals! And talking vocals, I big thumbs up to David Fremberg, whom knows how to combine a more melodic style with aggression without exagerating in the latter! More thumbs up to the extremely solid and occasionally poundingly heavy rhythm section of Fabian Gustavsson (bass) and Thomas Lejon (drums)! To get you acquainted with the music on their new album, the band has posted 2 songs off the new album (including the aforementioned “Slaves Of The Plethora Season”, the other being the great “Worst Enemy”) at their MySpace page (myspace.com/andromedaonline). Together with the 4 tracks of older albums, that should be enough to give you an idea of what this band is about! Anyways, if you’re into quality Prog Metal, there’s really no reason for you not to go check out the album in its entirety at your local record store. I’m almost certain you’ll not wanna separate from it once you’ve done that! To me personally, the album stands out enough to be nominated into that “Best (Prog Rock/Metal) Albums Of 2009” list of mine. I mean, even if the album was already released last year, that was in North America only, right? and to us Europeans this really is a brandnew item! 98/100 Tony. |