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The
European market seems to be flooded with good quality progressive metal
bands
at the moment, who have
stood the test of time over the past five or six years, and
never succumb to the more radio friendly music that the UK seems to bandy
about.
The
quality progressive metal album has been in abundance of late, and this
latest release from Hungarian band Age Of Nemesis,
formerly known simply as
'Nemesis',
is another one of those
quality albums I have had the privilege to listen too.
The album
opens up with a six-part concept work 'The Psychogeist Story' which tells
of a tale of a doctor who splits up from his wife and moves away with
their son where he experiments on his son. Then the mother gets a phone
call to identify her ex-husband, but the circumstances of his death and his
experiments with his son are lost.
Only the boy can say what really
happened!
There
have been some great concept albums over the years, and although this is
not a concept album from start to finish, it still ranks highly among the
likes of Queensryche's 'Operation Mindcrime' and 'Empire' and WASP's
'Crimson Idol' as a great concept piece.
The rest
of the album starts off with the impressive instrumental 'Goddess
Nemesis'.
'Eye of
the Snake' has a very Eastern feel to it and the intensity of the vocals
of Zoltan Kiss are some of the best on the entire album. Things are slowed
down a little with 'Karma', which lets the keyboards of Gyorgy Nagy run riot
on the track, and this mixed with the heavy bass line of Gabor Krecsmarik
make for a very dark and moving piece.
The final
two tracks on the album are some of the finest example of progressive
power metal you will ever hear.
The first 'Abraxas' mixes haunting vocals with
powerful guitar riffs to great effect. The final track 'Awaking Minds' is
another instrumental and the rich keyboards and semi acoustic guitars
round off a truly excellent album.
The artwork on the insert contains some truly wonderful, and somewhat disturbing pictures, check it out and
you'll see what I mean. The album also contains the bonus video for 'Fates Door',
which in my mind finishes this package off
very well indeed. Well worth checking out both musically and otherwise!
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