SURFACE TENSION

The debut album of a regrettably to unknown prog-metal band from the United States. SURFACE TENSION is a quite complex cd and extremly varied. Their overall style is prog- metal, no doubt, but they put in so many different types of music like Jazz, Blues etc. The album starts with "Secrets Of Centuries". First an orchestral passagebut then a quite surprising fast guitar joins. This passage is already quite complex but when the 1 verse begins that all floats away and you hear a slow and melodic rhythm section. In the chorus the guitar comes in again and it's starts to get more heavy and more complex but not too exaggerated. Every track is outstanding, "East Of Knowing" with this nice african melody, "The Guardin' Of Eden" with the nice bass work and its jazz parts, "The Convolution Box", an incredible instrumental piece featuring lots of different themes which all fit together perfectly and including wonderful soft melodies and complexity and "Design Of Enlightenment", a perfect longtrack and consistent with this great album. All the musicians are great: There are nice riffs and soli by the guitar, amazing bass lines, a perfect keyboard work, stunning drums with lots of breaks and time changes and the gorgeous vocals which are perfectly going with the music. I hope their next release (if there is one, considering they haven't had that much success) is on the same level and maybe even better! Great CD by an amazing band!