ATOMIC CLOCK

Atomic Clock is a young band from USA who embrace like many other bands of their generation the progressive metal style. While they bring absolutly nothing new in this over populated genre, they manage to come with a decent album, full of heavy guitars and a plesent voice. The album self titled is rather close to melodic power metal, only here and there are traces of progressive elements , they are similar to Jacobs Dream for ex or Without Warning, both american bads, and in places with Dream Theater, the Train of though era. What I like is the voice, very fine and powerfull tone has this Philip Gregory , great range, pitty that he doesn;t use his voice to a much complex movements, not only power metal meets heavy metal refrains. The guitar is heavy, only rare slow done, with nothing realy awesome arrangements but not bad either, usual riffs and solos, but ok in the end , the drums are pounding and keep the gear to work at full capacity. What I don't like on this first album is the muddy sound of the instruments, specialy the guitars are to garage like sound, in this case , when I'm talking about progressive metal I want to hear all instruments crystal clear, because each musician must be heared at maximum, here is not the case, the bass is almost unnoticed, the guitar is muddy like hell, the drums can be heard only when Miah Knight hit harder and make some nervous chops. The keyboards are used only sporadic, is ok, but not enought, I wanted more keys solo, a thing that doesn't happend only on couple of pieces , maybe 3. So in the end a pleasent album, nothing brilliant, usual stuff, they easy can be lost in the 100 tons of bands who emerged in this decade in this genre. The best piece is by far Snake, a great progressive metal tune that shows that they have talent but not realy entirely used at full capacity. 2.5 is the best rate I can give, overall not bad but totaly unintristing, if the next album will sound like this one you can forget about this band for good.