OUROBOROS

Finnish prog-metallers Status Minor are ready with their sophomore full-length in the form of "Ouroboros", following up on 2009's "Dialog".

Stylistically, the Status Minor stay within the world of progressive power metal, like they did on their debut, thus delivering epic and melodic metal music with powerful and memorable sing-along choruses and lush textures. Observing the conventions of progressive metal, Status Minor include keyboards into their instrumentation, which of course helps generate the above-mentioned lushness, but also delivering some spacey keyboard solos to complement the blazing and sweeping technically advanced guitar solos featured on this album.

Progressive but not inaccessible, elements such as odd time signatures do appear, but are pretty well masked by drum figures that are not too quirky, and, of course the many vocal melodies also help make the music accessible (check for instance a track like 'Stain' and the mighty 'Sail Away' which feature a number of clever odd time signatures). While a melodic album, "Ouroboros" does feature a lot of quite heavy riffage, which I applaud (check, for instance, 'Stain' and 'Smile').

In all, I think this is a pretty good album, but I must say that the choice of placing the epic power ballad 'Like a Dream' and the piano ballad 'Confidence and Trust' smack in the middle of the album and right after each other does, although they're both beautiful pieces of music, deflate the energy level somewhat, and it takes a couple of tracks for the album to reach the same intensity after that. Fortunately, the epic closing track 'Sail Away' makes up for any lack of intensity before that - it is simply a massive progressive metal masterpiece and not one of its ten minutes of length is wasted.

I think this is a very good progressive metal album, although it did take me more than just a couple of listens to get into it. Maybe it will click right away with you. In any case, if you like epic power metal and progressive metal, you should definitely give it a listen.

(review originally posted at metalmusicarchives.com)

I deliberately chose a Metal album after a Post Metal album. Like SISARE, STATUS MINOR hails from my country Finland, and this is their second album. I must point out that I'm not a listener of Metal / Heavy, but I'm doing my best to evaluate this against my very thin knowledge and interest for the genre(s). Quite certainly this represents the more melodic, more accessible and more likable Metal area to me. First, the vocals of Markku Kuikka are not awful growl but powerful and masculine in a respectable way. And second, the sound is meaty and intensive without getting too aggressive. Keyaboards sometimes get almost buried in the sound wall in the heaviest tracks such as 'Glass Wall', but then enters a keyboard intro of 'Like a Dream', just in perfect time. That beautiful, emotional Metal ballad features the duet vocals of Anna Murphy (whoever she is). Brief 'Confidence and Trust' is completely piano-oriented, and Anna Murphy sings all the vocals. Wow, these things are very nice surprises to my ears, on a Metal album!

'Stain' marks the return to the more typical heaviness, but the bright keys are audible too. That and 'Smile' fail to impress me, but for a Metal fan they probably work just fine. 'Flowers die' starts with a delicate acoustic guitar and is a relatively mellow Heavy Rock semi-ballad, easy to enjoy. It also features a good electric guitar solo. The final track 'Sail away' is nearly 11 minutes and right from the start it has a sense of a prog epic, containing various sections and orientating more towards synths than Metal-style guitars. And again a nice surprise to hear the voice of Anna Murphy, though quite briefly.

Now, the difficult task of rating, from my anti-Metal background. Naturally I'm not saying with these three stars that I'd enjoy this as much as three-star albums on my fave genres, but this clearly is a good product in the genre, and the kind of a Metal album that gradually succeeds to increase my appetite... Make it 3½ stars!