VOICE IN THE LIGHT

The thing about supergroups is that unless you are so excited about seeing the musicians in particular work together that just hearing them playing on the same track makes you gleeful, then all too often they're not all they're cracked up to be. Sometimes they're great, of course, but that really hinges on the individual personalities involved gelling and coming up with a distinctive identity for the project. Amaran's Plight do not have a distinctive identity: they play rather generic old-school prog metal of the mid-80s style.

When a supergroup sounds this generic, I often suspect it's because the group members simply couldn't hit on a more interesting sound they all loved so they just settled for a tried and tested approach which they can all live with; either way, what results isn't a bad album, but we've heard it all before and it doesn't really stand up next to the old classics it draws on.