AGE OF IMPACT

"Age of Impact" is maybe yet another verification for the widely spread opinion about All-Star-Projects. Unfruitable, insufficient and uninspirational may be the perfect expressions for this opinion. Well, regarding the project "Explorers club" which is lead by "Magellan" front man Trend Gardner, you can certainly indicate an All-Star-Project. Steve Howe, John Petrucci, James LaBrie, Terry Bozzio and Billy Sheehan just to name a few musicians Gardner has gathered round to realize his ideas for this project. Similar to his main band "Magellan" Gardner is the main songwriter. The various musicians seem to be part of the project just because of their technical skills. All of them come up with several remarkable solos. Most of the lead guitar work is done by John Petrucci. The solos are incredible but I have following problem with it: The song structure is recurring and tiresome, bombastic prog keyboard part - monster solo - bombastic prog keyboard part - monster solo. you can unquestionably estimate the rest. One thing I have to point out is Terry Bozzio's intention grabbing drumming. He really did a great job here. But there's unfortunately another thing I have to mention: the vocals. I never heard such dreadful vocal performances. James LaBrie is a singer with particularly good and enormously bad performances, exceptionally on stage. On "Age of Impact" his "barking" is really insufferable. The other vocalists seem to be acceptable but partly even they come to a sticky end. So there's a strong contrast involving the excellent drumming and the awful vocals.

The first song, "Fate speaks" can be regarded as an epic.maybe not because of it's diversity but mainly because of the duration. As I said before, the songwriting is kind of returning and uninteresting. Yes, there are excellent solos but apparently they can also be described as shredding. I don't want to go into detail with other songs because it's exactly the same with them. Maybe I have to mention the breath-taking drum outro of "Last Call" and the extremely terrible James LaBrie.

I bid you to avoid this album if you don't want to waste your money. Maybe, if you like shredding, Terry Bozzio and don't mind exceptionally boring songwriting as well as very horrific vocals you can give it a try. I think two points is all I can give. Prog Metal fans can maybe add one star but in no case more, the genre has a lot of better bands/albums to offer.