THE FOOLISHNESS OF GOD

These guys are a trio from Florida who happen to all be brothers.They say their influences are LED ZEPPELIN, RUSH, DREAM THEATER, BLACK SABBATH, well you get the picture. Two unique things about them are one, that they are Christians and two, the vocalist sounds very much like the singer for JANES ADDICTION.

The appeal for me was instantanious during the first song.The heavy bass lines, the in your face drums and the lead guitar that takes such a prominant role. The vocals did start to wear a little on me towards the end of the record, which surprised me because initially I loved the tone. Now there are dual vocals at times that work extremely well, and the riffs and guitar solos are all over this disc. This is a concept album about the fact that God's foolishness is much wiser than man's wisdom, and God's weakness is much stronger than man's strength. And it is all summed up on the final track that has some fellow preaching on and off throughout it (very annoying). "Space And Time" is my favourite, the heavy riffs and the cool guitar solo, and the way the song gets hard and well softer, back and forth.

Barely 3 stars really, but I have a soft spot for this style of music.

Torman Maxt is an american band with 3 albums under the belt 'till today. At first listen I said to myself, hmm this is not prog metal at all to my ears, this is much more towards post metal with some alternativ tendencies here and there, something a la Platypus, but less progressive and leass good. I didn't had high expectations when I decided to take a listen to this band, but after fiew spins I put my finger on what is wrong here. First the music is to much the same, not varations, no diversity, same riffs, same drum beats, and not to mention some awfull vocal parts, for the bigginers. Band formed around the three brothers Massaro, they didn't manage to catch any attention to the wider public, I understandable, the music is mediocre but not so bad as many claim to be, is much more worse music and albums then this one named The foolishness of time from 2001. In places I hear some Motorhead riffs, fast and concise, but the progressive moments I din't met them on this album, I've tried to catch some strong elemnts of progresivness , but I failed in the end to find anything exciting. Not a pieces stands as very good, some mediocre ones all the time, maybe the title track is maybe a 3 star track but failed in attract me in any way, but as I said not realy so painfull as many said. 2 is the best I can give, not good, but not very bad either, in the middle. I'm not bothered about christian lyrics, each one can express themself in any way they like, the music is one who make me go to sleep.

Torman Maxt is back again with their second album.

This time with a blend of Dream Theater, Black Sabbath, Rush and Led Zeppelin..... someone says. And that is pretty close to the truth. But add some heavy King's X influences, post rock too and a slab of AOR. It is obvious that the band has learnt from the many mistakes they made on the debut album. Most of the instrumentation errors has been fixed here. The vocals are still there though and they are tiresome and almost painful at places. A bit more integration with the rest of the sound has helped to fix the worst vocal excesses.

The music is pretty good throughout this album. The music are guitar based throughout and the guitars has improved by many country miles. My gripes with this album is the vocals (again !!) and the lack of really memorable songs and a lot of wishy washy sameness. But this is still a good album which the band should be happy with. It is still a free download so check it out yourself.

3 stars (barely and under doubt)