SHADOW GALLERY

Actually, this was my introduction to Shadow Gallery. I borrowed it from a friend of mine who had this album and listened to it once. I liked it and ordered it together with a few other albums by them a few week later. Since then, this one has been listened to by me several times and I really like it but sadly, like many other releases in the early days of the Magna Carta label (natably Magellan's debut) this album is forgotten and rather unknown to many.

Unlike other progressive metal bands, Shadow Gallery is softer and more emotional. Their debut confirms their further style right away only being less metallic than later releases. This album is not very heavy but still quite hard sometimes, they rather focus on the melody and arrangements instead of focusing on the metal it seems. You can clearly hear that this band is talented when it comes to technical and compisitional skills, though the songs are not as mature as their next album "Carved In Stone", and the musicians isn't as confident here unlike later releases, still some beautiful moments on this one and some good vocals, guitar and keyboard playing through the whole album. One problem is the drum machine (which they named Ben Timely for humoristic reasons obviously) they used here. It's just so boring and adds nothing to the music unfortunately and it sounds very dated as well. The production is poor, it lacks balance and is very muddy throughout. If it had been better, I could boost this one up to 4 stars actually. It definitely should be remastered soon!

Overall, I wouldn't really recommend this one to newbies to this band, even though I started with it. I have to admit that the cool cover was one of the reasons I checked out this one first, but I wasn't really disappointed. It's dark and sometimes mystical and adventurous and have several good moments on it. If you are a fan, check out this one, but newbies enter at own risk.

Rating: 3.5 stars.