ISOLATE

Circus Maximus from Norway got lot of praise around first two albums were released 2005 and respectivly 2007. Well, I don't know, this is not the type of prog metal I like very much, it has a fat sound that I really don't dig , not very much elaborated arrangements, only on instrumental piece Sane No More they are more then ok, nice musicianship though. The voice of Mike Eriksen is strong, very good vocalist, nice tone a spectacular range, but the instrumental parts fail to impress me big time, it sounds like a Symphony X version with diffrent vocalist and without that neo classical aproach of the masters. Short pieces, only two are lenghty 9 and 12 min, not enough for me, I want complicated prog metal with lots of tempo changes, keybords to run all the time, guitar breaks and all, here is not the case only here and there, to much time is vocal oriented kind of prog, ok the guitar parts are well done and delivers that crunchy kind of aproach but nothing really speacial as it praised all the time. Not bad as a whole, but nothing special either, I know hundreds of more inventive and intresting prog metal albums in my collection. 3 stars hardly.