From Jon Jeary to Damian Wilson to Glyn Morgan to Damian Wilson to Andrew “Mac” McDermott to Damian Wilson to Glyn Morgan. That’s how British prog-rockers Threshold’s singer journey looks like from 1988 to this day. Changing singers usually changes both sound and dynamics in a band and more often than not it changes the music too and everywhere a singer-change has happened, there will camps within the circle of fans. Threshold is unique in that area as the change of singer hasn’t changed neither the dynamics, sound or the music. And it looks like there are no camps dividing fans either. Threshold’s fans seem to dig the band no matter who’s singing. I do too. Luckily enough, Threshold has always had great singers which surely helps.
Category Progressive metal
Simulacrum – Genesis
When Finland and Hard Rock is being discussed, most people think of Nightwish or more melancholic, gloomy Metal acts and as far as I know, I haven’t heard of a Progressive Metal band from there. If you don’t count Leverage as Progressive Metal, that is. I don’t. Finland’s Simulacrum is a Progressive Metal band. The roots of the band goes back to 1999 when keyboarder Christian Pulkkinen started to write songs, songs that would end up on the band’s debut album The Master And The Simulacrum which came out in 2012. Three years later the band’s second effort, Sky Divided was released. There’s been a good six years since the band released anything new but there are reasons for that happening.
Fates Warning – Long Day Good Night
I really can’t make up my mind whether I’m a (big) fan of this band or not. I have little love for the first three John Arch fronted records and the first one with Ray Alder at the mike was an uneven effort. The band’s best effort by far is 1991’s Parallels, an album I genuinely love and I’m really into its predecessor Perfect Symmetry (1989) and its follow-up Inside Out (1994). I lost interest after that record and even though I own the three albums that followed, I hardly listen to them at all. After 2005, Fates Warning existed sporadically until they finally reunited back in 2013 with the album Darkness In A Different Light but the album was, unfortunately, an uneven affair that left me mostly cold.
DGM – The Passage
DGM are a new band to me. That kinda shows just how much I live in the world of progressive metal / hard rock. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against progressive metal – bands such as Dream Theater, Shadow Gallery, Symphony X, Bigelf, Opeth and Queensrÿche are all bands that I hold very dear – it’s just that most of the progressive metal bands out there leaves cold, underwhelmed and / or passes my by unnoticed. So, no, I’m not a prog metal fan per se which means that most bands in that genre are bands I just can’t be arsed to follow or even bother with. I have probably heard the name DGM sometime somewhere, but I know for sure that I haven’t heard a note of them before and this album is number eleven in their discography, so there you go. DGM started way back in 1994 as an instrumental power metal band in Italy but with the release of their self-produced debut mini album Random Access Zone the band had turned into a progressive metal band instead. Since then, the band has gone through many line-up changes, in fact all the guys that gave their names to the band – Diego Reali (guitar), Gianfranco Tassella (drums) and Maurizio Pariotti (keyboards) – are all gone today.
Circa – Valley of the Windmill
When I first saw the track list for this album, I though it was a mini-album or an E.P. But then I saw the length of the songs – 14.41, 9.24, 7.32, 18.43 – and stood corrected. Four songs in about 50-some minutes can only mean one thing – this is prog music of some sort. Since I have never heard of this band before I didn’t know if I could expect pop, rock or metal – or all of the above. But a quick google told me that the band has been around since 2006 and this album was their fifth, preceded by Circa 2007, Circa HQ (2009), Overflow (2009) and And So On (2012). They have also released two live albums, one in 2008 and one in 2013, which means that if I dug this record, I have missed out.
CD & Festival reviews 