MIND OVER BODY

One of the most complicated prog albums this year! After at least ten listens you realize, that this is masterpiece! It's much more complex than the first one, but it has even bigger replay value. Quality of compositions is pure evolution from the first album, but you really realize this after many concetrated listens! Mindflow's style is veary unique, they show some influences of POS(vocals), DT(complexity) & Fates Warrning(vocals -> better), but realy nothing too obvious! Music is like high speed rollercoaster, with 3 stops (great ballads!), lots of interesting rythm changes & interesting almost non repettitive compositions at all. If you are fan of Dream Theater & Pain Of Salvation, this CD si a must have. If you aren't, this is still veary veary good album. :)

In my opinion, Mindflow is the best prog-metal band from Brazil! Mind Over Body is a great improvement of their debut, Just The Two of US Me and Them. The songs are longer and the complexity is -very- high. I see this album as a combination of Dream Theater's Awake and the perfect vocals of Daniel Gildenlöw (Pain of Salvation).

"To let go... The hardest task in our lives. Letting go the things that we love or yet, the things that we deslike to the point we can't feel anything more. This album is about that... Letting go. Know life is impermanet and hold it on onlu brings us pain."

The digipack format is beautiful, with two very well done booklets. One of them is a cool HQ with the story of a man who lives the concept of the album.

I really recomend this album for prog-metal fans, it's a must-have!

After surprising the Prog Metal world with their very good debut in 2004, Mindflow return in 2006 to release a much more complex album that really pushes the boundaries of Prog Metal. This album takes a few listens as there is so much to digest, it is impossible to take it all in on just one listening.

The vocalist, Denilo Herbert, is probably one of the best singers in the genre. He has a natural sounding voice and is able to sing the slow tracks with a lot of emotion and passion. The next second he is singing from the top of his lungs and reaching the high notes without any strain. He also doesn´t imitate other vocalists which is a huge plus. Definitely a unique talent!

Rafeal Pensado uses great fills in his style of drumming and reminds me a bit of Mike Portnoy. The great thing with this band is that they are all fantastic musicians, excellent adventurous keyboards from Miguel Spada (Lots of great piano sounding keyboards too), great clean guitar tone from Hidalgo and a bass that is not lost in the mix but stands out and is a pleasure to listen to on headphones.

This album must be heard on headphones to really be able to appreciate the work that went into this recording. If you like progressive metal with lots of different time changes or music that pushes the boundaries, this album is for you.

A Masterpiece!

Mind Over Body is one of the best albums of 2006. Slot this one next to Mastodon's Blood Mountain and Zero Hour's Specs of Pictures Burnt Beyond as the progressive metal highlights of 2006. This album sees the band push the boundaries of prog metal, there is so much going on here. I've never heard anything like. The complexity of it all is mind blowing, but importantly this complexity does not overwhelm the music as these guys are brilliant song writers.

The album has some interesting and unique experimentation with electronic music and synths, something which was on there debut as well but they have really upped its use here. This all adds to the atmosphere created on this album.

The music on this album is a mix of the musical virtuosity of Dream Theater and Symphony X, the melody and vocals on Pain of Salvation, with the sense of insanity of Psychotic Waltz and Watchtower.

The ballads on this album, 'Thousand Miles From You' and 'A gift To You', are really beautiful with some stunning piano work and classical instrumentation. And they provide a nice breather from the craziness of the rest of the album. 'Just Water, You Navigate' is another slowish song, which slowly builds and bursts into melodic glory at the 4 minute mark.

But it is the other six tracks on the album, which all exceed the 9 minute mark that are really impressive and dare I say groundbreaking. These songs are stunning, and really there is no way I will be able to go through each one a give a description. These songs 'Crossing Enemy's Line', 'Upload Spirit', 'Chair Designer', 'Hellbitat', 'Follow Your Instinct' and 'Hide and Seek', I know it's a cliché but they really do need to be heard to be believed. There complex arrangements and the frequency of the odd time signatures make for quite an adventurous listening experience. The melodies are brilliant and there are some absolutely brilliant riffs that will stick on your head for years to come.

Mindflow created a brilliant debut with Just the Two of Us.Me and Them, but they have exceeded their debut in every aspect with Mind Over Body. These guys are destined for big things, the future of prog metal is here

The best realese of 2006! Mind Over Body is a masterpiece in every sense of the the word. I have to say that am very proud of these guys, as a brazilian and as a progressive metal fan. This is fantastic complex and beautiful music.

Mindflow make use of rhythm changes and complex passages like no other band i already heard. Of course this characteristic makes the album not so easily acessible to everyone that's not into progressive music, but with a few listens you can clearly see the magnificence of this perfect work. "Crossing Enemy's Line" and "Chair Designer" are the highlights of the album, while in the ballad "Thousand Miles From You" the vocalist Danilo Herbert shows his talent and his strong influence of Daniel Gildenlöw in his vocal techniques. Like already said in the previous reviews, you can see a huge influence of Pain of Salvation and Dream Theater in the work of this guys, but without any shade of doubt that this is very very very original and unique.

Perfect work, indicated to Pain of Salvation and Dream Theater fans or any proghead who loves progressive metal out there.

Keep it up, Mindlow!

10/10

This album is excellent. It's full of exciting melodies, puzzling rhythm changes and heavy riffing. To me it's one of my favorite albums from 2006. The heavy tracks often remind me of Dream Theaters Awake album: these songs are intense and inventive. There are also some tracks that are more relaxed... and they are really beautiful. I think this band is the best newcomer of the last five or six years (certainly in the prog-metal genre). If you can get your hands on a copy of this one and if you like DT, PoS, ..., be sure to buy it immediately!! I'm anxious to know what these talented guys will come up with in a few years (when they have a bit more experience and hopefully some more budget so that they can upgrade the production-standards a bit).

Keep up the good work, Mindflow!!

Wow! This is INTENSE progmetal ! Theres no resting your head here, complexity goes and goes. And cos' of that, this is a hard album to get into. But of course, once you take the time and listen carefully, this one blows your mind. Everything is so perfectly executed, a perfect balance between all instruments,lots of KBs,which I prefer, with some electrononic "effects" here and there; great singer with great range, not only in tone, but also in texture and style (rapping sometimes ala D. Gildenlow). This is an album you must hear over and over because is so condensed. All the ideas thrown in here could easily make up two albums from another band, but not here, there is no filler whatsoever. They're from Brazil, so Id say this is the Angra of Progmetal

Dense, this is the word for this album. The music is heavy, intricated, complex, melodic sometimes and very, very creative. think of a Dream Theater without all those noodlings and instrumental display of individual skills: that´s Mindflow. Unlike many bands in this field Mindflow works for the music, with no ego battles and everybody doing it fo the overall result. Yes, they have their own style and they are very good on that. This is the kind of album you have to hear more than twice to really get their music. The production is absolute perfect and the band has surely some of the best muscians in the brazilian Prog metal scene (or the world for the matter).

My CD came in a digi pack case with a beautiful artwork and lavish booklet with pictures and words for the songs. It also came with a 14 page comic book that tells the story of the song Follow Your Instinct. And there is 79+ of music. All these for only 15 reais (about 7 amercian dolars!) on the store! What a bargain! I almost could not believe my luck.

Anyway, this is really prgressive! to get all the subleties and details you´ll have to listen to this record many times. It is a fantastic travel through complex music that is also very good and focused. it is quite demanding indeed, but you´ll be rewarded in the end. If you´re into prog metal you can´t miss this one.

I've just heard MINDFLOW's 2006 work Mind over Body and I have to say, I'm at the same time impressed and dissapointed.

I'm impressed (favorably) because the band is certailny a terrific, outstanding, amazing group of musicians. The vocals are nothing to write home about but the guitars and keys are just great. The level of playing that Hidalgo and Spada can achieve is demonstrated by the complicated textures, solos and the variety of styles that they go over in this release. No doubt the band is one of the great surprises in musicianship in the progressive-metal world. Even better to know that they come from Brazil, a land that has given us good power-prog-metal acts before (ANGRA), even though MINDFLOW is much more progressive in a typical way.

I'm impressed by the production values. Not only is the recording perfect and the sound of the disc something to really applaud; the band has also made an effort to provide its fans with one of the best booklet/cases, with beautiful artwork and even a whole song (and the album's concept) put into comic in a second booklet. The band takes the fans and its art seriously, and I really like that.

But there are some dissapointing elements to this album. And I find them where most people find this album's strengths: in the complexity of the music. I've given my opinion a million times: I love to hear technical displays of prowess and intricate structures, but not at the expense of coherence. I've hear Mind over Body more than a few times and I still think that it's very difficult to grasp any kind of structure in some of the songs. The musicians (very good nes, I say it again) lose themselves in change after change after change, never allowing a song to just, well, flow (pun intended).

Now, it can be said that some of prog's best moments have arrived thanks to challenges to the traditional structures and to completely difficult-to-get songs. I agree. But I can't sense any sense of symphonism here: this is not something like Close to The Edge; I also can't sense any multi-sectionism a la Supper's Ready or A Change of Seasons (metallic rhapsodism?). I can't even detect the broad, far-reaching maps of many post-metal songs; what is even more deciding, I can't find riff to riff structures like in DEATH. Just to focus in the genre, PAIN OF SALVATION (wihout a doubt the band MINDFLOW tries to emulate) has never failed to have a sense of coherence, structure, song-craftmanship. Yet MINDFLOW has. And that is what ultimately dissapointed me about them.

The music? Complex progressive-metal with touches of DREAM THEATER, QUEENSRYCHE, but mostly, PAIN OF SALVATION. At times the band sounds too much like Gildenlow's creature. But without the art of the song that the Swede masters possess.

All in all, a good, if flawed album, by a band that I'm sure can very easily deliver a 5-star album in the future, should they choose to let the music flow and save some of the complexity for future releases.

Recommended for: PAIN OF SALVATION fans, progressive-metal fans with a love for very progressive music...

... progressive doesn't always mean how many solos and sections a song can have, you know.

'Mind Over Body' - Mindflow (6/10)

Coming from a part of the world that is now becoming one of the hotspots for metal, Brazillian progressive metal group Mindflow is one of the more promising melodic metal bands I've heard in recent times. As my first introduction to this band's music, I had little to no idea of what I would find with Mindflow's second full-length studio album 'Mind Over Body', but after having digested it throughly, I am left torn by my opinions. On one hand, the band presents a very appetizing, proggy sound and stellar performance. However, the band's biggest problem lies in the fact that they sound far too much like the genre's existing giants to really take a unique shape of their own.

Going well-past the hourlong mark and featuring many tracks with lengths passing ten minutes, there's no denying that Mindflow are seasoned composers and performers. Led onwards by the strong, trained tenor voice of Benilo Herbert (a voice who sounds close in comparison to fellow Brazillian Edu Falaschi of Angra) the album makes it's label of prog metal well founded from the first moment on. With the opening mini-epic 'Crossing Enemy's Line', Mindflow unfold 'Mind Over Body's greatest track and strength from the beginning, instantly giving a powerful, if derivative journey that while at times quite effective and beautiful, does seem to cycle through sounding like a couple of Mindflow's more obvious influences.

This is where 'Mind Over Body's greatest weakness lies. While the band proves themselves to be highly proficient and skilled, they come across sounding like a bastard child of progressive metal's two greatest acts. While the proggier and heavier instrumental moments could easily be compared with anything Dream Theater has done, Mindflow seems to be a band that also shelters underneath the umbrella of Pain of Salvation as well. Many of Benilo Herbert's vocal stylings seem to suggest he has used Daniel Gildenlow as a vocal model with which to develop under. While the band does work well underneath the shadow of these two giants, as do the majority of progressive metal acts, giving the band a bit of a rough foundation to begin with.

Another issue (albeit to a lesser extent) is that of the consistency in the musical quality. The album is marked throughout by recurring motifs and ideas to give a sort of latent cohesion to the work, but the moments of brilliance are interspersed with drawn out sections that really feel like they could have been cut down in length, in order to preserve some of the lost interest. While each track is bound to have moments that jump out and really amaze, the songs themselves generally feel quite scattered, despite having plenty of awesome musical ideas to use.

A masterpiece that certainly 'could have been', Mindflow really deserves a commendation for a brilliant technical performance and having some moments that easily rival those of Dream Theater or Pain of Salvation. However, the spectres of these two prog metal giants seems to loom over Mindflow's head, refusing to let the band really develop their own unique style and sound. Until then, the album remains a good piece of work, but something that truly has been done countless times before.

The moment I heard the very first minutes of "Mind Over Body" I knew I was facing a somewhat decent DREAM THEATER clone. Decent as in they keys and guitar work are really good but do they really need to stick to the Labrie-esque vocals?

Around 7 minutes in, at last, I heard a very nice riff and then... modified vocals? It just keeps going this way for the entire album. For me, this album consists of good parts, bad parts, horrible parts... all mixed together. I'm giving them a 3 star rating for the good work on the keys and guitar (which I find is the only good thing in here) and I hope they create something more unique on their future works.

MINDFLOW are a Prog-Metal band out of Brazil and this is their sophomore release. I quite liked their debut but on this one they've created a dense and complex work that isn't nearly as melodic as their first album. So yeah 80 minutes of it makes it tough to digest. I've owned this for a couple of years but have kept putting off the review because I knew it would be a battle to break it down. Ambitious is an understatement I suppose when it comes to this detailed concept album.There's even two thick liner notes to wade through.

"Crossing Enemy's Line" has a great sounding intro then it gets heavier before a minute.Vocals 1 1/2 minutes in and they aren't normal. Not the most melodic music i've heard either. It does settle 9 minutes in with regular vocals then settles even more after 10 minutes with fragile vocals. It does pick back up before it ends. "Upload Spirit" opens with some intense music including the vocals. It's heavier after 3 minutes then it settles 5 minutes in with piano and intricate drumming before it kicks back in. "A Thousand Miles From You" features fragile vocals and piano to start then a beat joins in.

"Just Water,You Navigate" starts to pick up a minute in with vocals. It kicks in after 4 minutes and passionate vocals follow. "Chair Designer" hits the ground running and we get piano too.Vocals also join in then it settles back some as the tempo continues to shift. "A Gift To You" features soft vocals and piano. Some guest violin half way through. "Hellbitat" kicks in hard quickly. Spoken words as the heaviness continues before 6 minutes.Vocals are back then it settles after 7 minutes followed by piano then vocals.Violin too on this one. It kicks back in after 10 minutes. A calm ends it. "Follow Your Instinct" sounds great with that dark intensity. It does settle though before 1 1/2 minutes. Spoken words after 2 1/2 minutes then it kicks back in hard. Another calm after 9 minutes. It's heavy again after 11 minutes. I don't like when they shout out the words. "Hide And Seek" opens with piano and violin then it turns fuller quickly. A calm with vocals a minute in then it kicks back in.

This just isn't the style of Metal I enjoy. I can appreciate it certainly but it's not something I want to play.