THE MUSIC THAT WILL HEAL THE WORLD

Interesting release from this Italian band.

It seems like they are trying to fuse the genres melodic hard rock and prog metal on this release, and to some degree they are successfull doing that as well.

It's all very melodic, and the metal bits have been polished so that the music will be accessible to a larger crowd, while still being of interest to metal fans.

What's lacking are good songs - or perhaps better song editing, and a better vocalist. Lots of promise and talent here, some work on song writing and song structuring, and this band may indeed make music that will heal the world.

Same as the Marco Sfogli release I bought this album thanks to listening to the stream tracks on progarchives when I was checking out all progmetalbands. This was one of the better ones so I went to the store for it.

I have to say, now that I heard the entire album several times it's not really what I expected. And that's surprising because they had at least half the album put on stream here so I had the opportunity to get a good idea of what it has to offer. That's partly due to the fact they put the best tracks on stream and also because I haven't really been very critical when I was judging. Not that I'm extremely disappointed about the whole thing and want to call it poor because that's not quite the case. Maybe I should have been more aware of the vocals of this band because they spoil a lot of the fun for me. This is not really good singing to me, it's more like screeching most of the time. It sounds forced as if it costs a lot of effort. The rest of the performing isn't bad at all, at least this is true prog metal with enough progressive elements to be in this category. The compositions are pretty complex at times and provide listening pleasure but I do have the feeling they could grow in this department.

I hope they do and give priority to the instrumental passages in their music. Maybe they can grow towards the 4 star league in that case. For now it will have to be 3 stars (3,25).

Twinspirits is a young band from Italy who playes prog metal. Lead by the keybordis Daniele Liverani from defunct Empty Tremor (another italian prog metal band, disbanded now), Twinspirits acomplished in one album since now that other prog metal bands only succeded in years of career. The album was release at MusicLion in 2007 and was a big discovery for me last year, among the best proog metal albums in years in this scene, both musicaly and lyricaly. Also the master behind the LionMusic - Lars Eric Mattsson - is their executiv producer aswell, so another thing that worth investigate this album. The album flows from shifting moods with solid musicianship to mellow elements incorporate in their metal sound as a whole. Great are key passages made by the main man of the band Daniele Liverani, excellent are aswell the duo between him and the guitarist Tommy Ermolli. The singer, he has a germanic name, more danish, so I don't think his italian - Søren Adamsen - did a great job here, of course his is not among the top vocalists around in prog metal, but he fits very well in this kind of music, he remind me sometimes with the one from Empty Tremor or in place with the singer from Vanden Plas, but not a copy. So the best pieces are all, with a plus one the opening track Projected, an instrumental track that shows what you gonna get from this album, greatness and top musichianship. My second fav piece is the slow one, What You Want - amazing piece, simple and haunting, the rest are also very ok. If you want to discover young bands in prog metal try this one, you want be deseppointing for sure, to me was a real pleasure the whole album. Similar bands, Empty Tremor, Madsword, Vanden Plas. Recommended, not a masterpiece but with some hope the next album will get that status. 4 stars for sure.

Italian band Twinspirits was formed and is lead by keyboard player Daniele Liverani. From the writings I've seen on the bands homepage as well as some citations other places it seems he's a pretty well known guy. But don't despair if you aren't familiar with him though, neither was I before I got this CD to review. Anyhow, this is Liverani's band; and he has made a band with mostly younger musicians. The musicians are all talented, vocalist Sören being the raw talent, guitarist Tommy sounding like a more developed one, and the rest of the guys in between those two on the development ladder.

Musically it seems like the band, or perhaps the band leader, is on a mission to fuse melodic hard rock and prog metal into a new type of music, trying to make what I'd suggest should be called progressive hair metal. Which I'm all for personally, as this kind of music would certainly boost the commercial appeal of progressive music. Although the end result probably won't heal the world when it has been fully developed, it may bring some much wanted healing to the Billboard charts.

As for musical inspiration, AOR and melodic hair metal can be named in general, and the metal bits here mainly seems to come from Dream Theater; although Iron Maiden and Manowar seems to be bands this group are familiar with as well.

The end result on this release are songs that are highly melodic, where the synths are ever- present in the soundscapes, underscoring guitars as well as floating above the other instruments in the mix, strengthening melody lines and creating at times really epic- sounding moods. The guitars gives us nice melodies when played acoustically, short and drawn out chords as well as slow to mid-paced riffs and riff patterns. The guitar sound has been polished well, even when playing some rather gritty sounding riffs there's hardly any raw edges to the sound, resulting in a sound that is commercially appealing to non- metalheads while still sounding interesting enough to the metal fans.

Still, this album ends up as being more promising than good, though. Some elements are still lacking here.

One of the weak points here are the vocals. Sören has a nice voice, but he needs to develop it. Very much a raw talent; it's fairly easy to tell that he has the makings of a very good general purpose rock vocalist that could sing ballads as well as aggressive metal tracks with ease. It's just as easy to hear that he has a fair amount of work that needs to be done before he'll do it well all the time.

Another element that is lacking is good songs. Most of the songs here contain quite a few very good elements, some real good atmospheres, moods and licks are to be found. The chorus sections are rather weak though, and some elements seem to be rather pointless as well. The main weakness of the songs here are the length, though. When most songs stretch beyond the 7 minute mark, the songs should contain some pretty strong moods and atmospheres to stay interesting, and too much repetition of themes will become boring for many listeners.

There's much talent and lots of promise on this release, but for me this band isn't quite there yet - nice try, but no cigar. Yet. It'll be very interesting to see what this band has developed into next time around, though. There's enough talent and skill here for this band to end up as a commercial giant sometime in the future.