ROOM XVII

Medea is a dutch progressive metal band formed around the excellent guitarist Henry Meeuws. They released so far two albums, Individual unique and Room XVII in 2006. The music is very much close to another famous band from land of tulips Ayreon, but with their own twist and with a lot of great ideas. Their second release is a concept album about dutch history, voyage of the Batavia and the lands conquered by tdutch in 17 century. The head of the band Henry Meeuw who is also the keyboard player in another dutch band Casual Silence, he gathered around him an impressive line up featuring musicians from Casual Silence, Day Six, Ayreon, and a huge choir of 65 men named Lombardi. This album must be considered also a rock opera close to what Ayreon done for years, with some incredible musicianship and great ideas. Maybe the album overall is a little calmer, but the harder moments are not forgotten, some impressive solo's and catchy progressive guitar-themes are here to be enjoyed on this album. The concept behind the story is very well done and very well puted along with the music, I'm not gonna tell everything about it, you must get the CD and you will understand the whole thing. The best pieces are all, not a weak moment in my opinion, the opening track , the title track is brilliant and shows the true talent of Henry Meeuws, who is very underrated among guitarist from this decade, sad because he realy know how to make a piece shine in prog metal genre. The bombastic piece State of suspense featuring that 65 male choir is brilliant, just take a listen and you will love it from the first second and the final piece the longest one Chaos solution nearly 11 min of high class prog metal. So, as a conclusion this band is very underrated in prog circles, I don't realy know why, their music is brilliant and very catchy for sure. The album has many qualities , lots of variations, good song structures and outstanding musicianship. The one's who like Day Six, Ayreon, Shadow Gallery to some point, Medea is recommended, and specially this second album. 4 stars for sure, great and yet very unnoticed band and album, a good addition in any collection.