ZODIAC

"Zodiac Prologue" opens with narration and atmosphere. It turns heavy a minute in and the vocals join in. It then blends into "Aries" where it kicks in with the guitar buzzing around as vocals join in.This blends into "Taurus" which is weak and it doesn't sound good either. "Gemini" is better but again the sound quality is not good. "Cancer" opens with piano and synths as reserved vocals and more joins in.This is almost ballad-like.

"Leo" kicks in hard with vocals and riffs. Good song. "Virgo" has some cool sounding guitar as vocals and drums kick in.This is still an average tune at best. "Libra" opens with atmosphere then it kicks in.Vocals too. "Scorpio" opens with thunder as the bass comes in almost Harris-like then vocals.The bass player is the star here. "Sagittarius" features prominant guitar while "Capricorn" opens with a bass and a spacey mood. It picks up before 1 1/2 minutes.This is good, especially the bass. "Aquarius" is guitar led as vocals join in quickly. "Pisces" is mid paced and it sounds pretty good, it blends into "Zodiac Epilogue" to end the album.

A very low 3 stars but I do like several of the tracks.

And it is utter nonsense.

The music is boring and uninteresting. The technical ability is there, but everything seems so bland and formulaic. The lyrics are complete balderdash which don't really make any sense. Or maybe they do but the music is so devoid of excitement that it's impossible to follow.

A lot of the songs are too short for anything to really shine through, and on top of that, they all sound the same. You can clearly hear how passionate vocalist and main songwriter Keith Sudano is by his performance, but that just serves to make me somewhat pity the guy for how dedicated he seems to this album. I mean, it's laughable how serious this record is.

To add to the unintentional comedic value of 'Zodiac'... the most memorable song is probably bonus track 'Fast Forward'. It's a six-minute bass solo that is about four minutes too long, and while it does have some nice melodies in it, it gets repetitive fast. Sadly, there is probably an Eternity X fan out there somewhere that is desperately trying to seek out this rare bonus track (funnily enough, a edited, shorter version of this song will appear on the bands follow- up release. Yay!).

It's so hard to figure out what the hell this album is really about. I can only assume that it's meant to be some super inspiring introspective journey of self-discovery... but ultimately it just takes itself way too seriously.