SEVEN

I am not a huge fan of most 'Neo Prog', and this album is a great example of why. The production is sterile and flat, the drums are hollow, and the music itself is lacking of anything original, new, or different... it all seems to re-create decades-old ideas.

The female vocalist has a decent voice, but her vocals are devoid of passion and seem to have no conviction in relation to the lyrics... as if she's merely reciting the lyrics off a sheet of paper and not really 'feeling' what she's saying.

The seven deadly sins concept is a bit insipid and some of these lyrics are cringe-inducing to me: the band come across as bland Christian Rock at times.

This album is also insufferably long... why do modern bands feel the need to crowbar as much material as possible (regardless of quality) into the 76 possible-minutes of a compact disc? 'Seven' is beyond drawn-out... to the point that it's mind-numbing.

The sad part is that with some editing and compositional tweaking this could have been a very good album; there are parts here and there that catch your ear and are quite good (the first 3 minutes of 'Pride' are excellent, for instance, and have some precious playful wordless-vocal-melodies that i really enjoy).

'Gluttony' is a decent opener with probably the best music on the disc... but there's a vocal part that sounds way too close to 'Yes' (the 'cha-cha-cha cha-cha' part from Sound Chaser, mixed with something from 90125). Otherwise, the music is good and features some great synth playing, hard syncopation and counterpoint. I like this track, but it is about 5 minutes longer than it needs to be.

'Envy' is another quality track featuring the best and most memorable vocal melodies on the entire album... musically, this reminds me of 'IQ' a bit. There are some nice fat synth-bass sounds and lovely piano playing. Unfortunately, this song drags on about 8 minutes too long.

Most of the rest of this album is utterly forgettable; the songs all seems to blend together into one big annoying, never-ending mess of a song. I would not recommend this album to anyone.