SELF EXILE

Wastefall is a progressive metal band from Greece. It's really great to see such a great act coming from Greece, because the country gives not only progressive metal, but many metal genres, some of the best support in the world, despite their somewhat low output of artists. Wastefall helps open the door for Greek metal artists to break more into the scene.

Wastefall's latest album Self Exile is an interesting release. This band has the ability to combine Progressive Metal with many different timbres. There's something for everyone throughout the course of this album. There's aggressive Metal riffing, bluesy guitar leads, sasy drum fills, fusion bass melodies, and even some Flamenco guitar leads. All in all, this album has a variety of points of interest. Chances are, a listener will pay more attention to different parts throughout this album, coming up with a pleasant surpise with each listen. There aren't really any standout tracks, but each one has it's own tools that it brings to this album.

Domenik Papaemmanouil is the lead vocalist and one of the guitarists for this band. His vocal style is particularly reminiscient of Pain of Salvation's front genius Daniel Gildenlow. Papaemmamnouil's vocal style has a variety of textures that account for a big reason of why a listener can be so caught up in the flow of this album.

Alex Katsiyiannis is the other guitarist. He relieved from vocal duties is able to show off more lead talents. The chordal harmonies in the guitars are all but boring. This band can pull of a variety of tones that attack the listener in different ways. The album is anything but relentless in it's atmosphere, it attemps to show many different moods. The lead playing from Katsiyiannis is first class. He solos of a variety of chords and modulations with great feel and phrasing.

Christos Kyrkilis' keyboards unfortunately don't seem to be an essential part of this album. Just like Hermannson from Pain of Salvation Kyrkilis adds a great sense of melody to the compositions, but unfortunately unlike Hermannson, Kyrkilis does not have the unison role in Wastefall that Hermannson has in Pain of Salvation. A good performance, but not the most inspiring I have ever heard from a keyboardist.

Nick Valetzis' bass playing helps to gives this band a distinctly different sound from Pain of Salvation. Unlike Kristoffer Gildenlow, Valetzis has a busier style with more of a fusion influence. His busier style of bass playing is built more upon virtuosity than Gildenlow's primarily rythymnic style. Valetzis puts in a great performance adding to the uniqueness of this band.

Kostis Papaleksopoulos also adds to the rythymnic abilities of this band. Papaleksopoulos has an excellent ability to use his toms in creative fasions. His playing is very clean and direct. His bass drum technique is first class using a variety of patterns to fit tightly with the bass. The cymbals are hit at the perfect times, there isn't gratuitious cymbal noise throughout the album. A very very tight performance.

The production is excellent. The guitars are crisp and clean. There is more definition than distortion which is always pleasant in the production of metal albums. The bass is very present in the mix witha strong tone with an awful lot of punch, but at the same time very clean. The keyboards aren't very noticeable, I would have prefered a larger role in production. The drums are excellent, there is definition to the toms, and there is no background noise carrying on into the next beat. The vocals are clear and warm, but with such an excellent singer, poor vocal production would be almost impossible. Excellent proudction.

An excellent pickup for fans of Pain of Salvation and other experiemental metal bands that fuse togethor a variety of influences to make their music.

A lot of people are reminded of Pain of Salvation when they listen to this band, and this is understandably so, however, I also get a very strong vibe of Audioslave on this album. This album is also much heavier than PoS is, I'd say much closer to Dream Theater/Nevermore as far as guitars/bass go. So despite the dynamics of the lead vocalists, I'll go ahead and throw those comparisons out the window.

The vocals offer more of a "mainstream" rock/metal feel to them than a "prog" sound. One thing that always disturbed me with this album is that they would seem like they would get a really great riff going, but then they would move immediately on to something else, and so the moment where you go "man that's really cool" only lasts for a few seconds.

Another thing that disturbs me here is why metal band's feel the need to have the soft-ballad. Minutes to abandon is such a track, and while it isn't terrible, it offers nothing memorable or unique. The best track here is probably Dance of Descent, which has intriguing songwriting structure that reminds me of Orphaned Land's Mabool. Overall it's not that bad of an effort, but I never feel really moved by any of these tracks.