Band : Vargton Projekt
Album title : ProgXpriMetal
Label : Lion Music
Distributor : Bertus
Release Date : 29/07/2011
Release : CD

I will start this review by saying that this album is not an easy one.  It takes several listening sessions to get it all.  The reason for this is that the material on this album is extremely varied.  Most of it’s influences are progressive metal, but there are also some near eastern influences (think of Mahavishnu Orchestra) and some experimental rock influences (King Crimson, …).  The eastern influences mainly come from one instrument, a sitar.

Originally the album would have been a fully instrumental album, but Mats Hedberg decided to contact Björn Jansson to put vocals on some selected tracks.  I wonder what the album would have sounded like without the vocals.
As I told you before, this is not an easy album to listen to.  You just cannot sit back and relax.  Which, I admit,  made it not so much a boring experience, but one which was rather tiresome.  You have to focus all your attention on the songs to get the complexity and different layers of the songs.  So definitely no album for the faint-hearted.

These guys may be some very capable musicians, but the variety and complexity of the songs make it difficult to listen to the whole album in one time.  And since it’s an album with 18 tracks in total, not all of which are that long luckily enough, I doubt this will easily find its way back to my CD player.

65/100

Erik Morren.