THE INNER JOURNEY

Imagery is a Brazilian Progressive Metal band. The Inner Journey (2012) is their first album. To celebrate the pre-release of the album back in March of 2012 they opened a concert by the Dutch band Focus, which is quite an achievement for an unknown band.

When I say Progressive Metal you'll have to forget the label a little bit (even if it's really difficult to do so) , because Imagery turns out to be different. Forget about all the Dream Theater copies you hear every day!

The Inner Journey (2012) was self-released by the band and shows in its 8 tracks and 43 minutes a perfect balance between the Heavy Metal and the Progressive Rock. If you can't believe me, just push play in the first track of The Inner Journey (2012) and you'll get what I mean. 'Fourth Secret' is instrumental and has everything. It is heavy but full of melodies. When 'Imagery', the track, comes in, you hardly notice that the track changed. Harsh vocals with dissonant melodies, the most interesting instrumental passages and the epic ending. It's even weird to listen to such a good debut. It's far from common that bands get first albums as good as The Inner Journey (2012).

In the time they were recording the album they were just a trio: Joceir Bertoni (vocals and guitars), Ricardo Fanucci (bass) and Luciano Neves (drums). But they were smart enough to call Henrique Loureiro to record keyboards on almost all the tracks. Right now Henrique is officialy in the band. I said it was a smart move cause the mix between the heavy riffs and the heaviness in 'Perception' are 'broken' by the keyboards, which is just perfect!

Fourth track 'Start The War' begins and we hardly notice the passing of the tracks, another smart move by the band. Or maybe the album is just good enough to make me just listen and go with the songs. While 'The Rain' is probably the most heavy song on the album, 'Show Me' is the lighter one. It just comes to show how the band can be good at both sides of their sound. The album is finished by the heavy 'Stranger' and the twisted 'Last' with its final words read in a somber voice. According to their Bio the band wanted to unite two of their passions: Heavy Metal and Progressive Rock. But without being a copy, like nine out of ten bands are. And you know what? Imagery did it! An original band with an original sound and The Inner Journey (2012) proves it!

Superb musicianship that compensates not so amazing compositions. They have some crimsonian executions like on Lizards or Red, what contributes to give this album a good credibility. They made a wise decision of letting Henrique Loureiro, the guest on keyboards and piano, take part on some compositions (tracks 3, 5 and 7). His diversity of techniques, rythyms and tempos is particularly inspired. It was also an excellent choice of letting him participate on all tracks, he adds some short and subtle yet intriguing classical or psych sounds to the album.

Vocals are weak. No personality, no deepness, singing almost always on the same cadence.

Unfortunately, this was their one and only release. On their youtube channel there's some unreleased material that I liked. And with the exception of Henrique Loureiro, I'm not aware about their participation on other prog projects. Joceir Bertoni went on to create some rock songs. That's a pity: bass playing on "Start the War" is incredible, surprising drumming is present on "The Rain", and intense guitar playing can be found on most of the tracks, specially on the 2nd.

The best tracks go form 1 to 5.

This is one of the fine heavy prog work with some metal guitar riffs.

3.9 stars of five.