PARALLEL MIND

On "Connections", the band tries to tie the first album in by naming the opening 15-minute 4-piece suite "Colossus 2". I would say that suite is OK, and mostly in the style of progressive jazz fusion that the first album excelled in. The tonal difference here is the presence of a guitarist, and one that tends to favor riffing and metal leads. It's kept to a minimum, but a little bit more and - heh heh - you would have lost me altogether.

The real issue I have with this album is track 6 "Confession of Faust". This is the only song with vocals, aside from some wordless female vocals during "Colossus 2". And the vocals here are very reminiscent of Dream Theater, along with some metal riffing. (Honestly, it sounded just like a song from "Metropolis 2" - can't remember which one...) The song is not terrible in a prog metal sort of way, but it is WAY out of context with the rest of the album. It's just jarring. And at that point in the album, I was left wondering if it was even worth listening to the end.

It is.

The last 3 tracks covering the final 25 minutes of the album are GREAT! Much more of what I was looking for from the band. The drums and keyboards are incredible throughout the album. They replaced Bill Kopecky on bass, and the replacement is good. He's no Bill Kopecky.

Even if you skip track 6 (as I will from now on), you still get a solid 48 minutes of pretty good music. So I'm going 3-1/2 stars on this album. Definitely check out their debut.

The album isn't perfect however, one begins to lose interest after a while as it begins to sound the same (a problem among many instrumental albums). On top of that nothing sounds terribly new, it's well executed and polished but at the end of the day, much of this sounds like music we've heard before.

I'm not going to go through each individual song because, in truth, there's no point. The music is seamless and going through every sound / time change in the music would be a tedious and mind numbing venture that wouldn't provide any real value without the music accompanying it. What I am going to say however is that if your a fan of LTE / Planet X, buy this record. If you love fusion and are looking for something a bit harder, get this record. Similarly, if you like Heavy Prog / Prog Metal and want to get into fusion, this is a good place to start.

For everyone else, you can probably skip this one over, it has some great musicianship but ultimately nothing new.

4 stars for my personal rating, and for fans of Fusion or heavy instrumental prog.

3 stars for everyone else.

A fantastic album but it is in no way essential for most people's library.

Parallel Mind is Joe Babiak (drums, percussion, flugelhorn!, trumpet), Nibandh Nadkarni (keyboards) and William Kopecky (6-string electric fretless bass). Their very impressive website claims that their influences are Yes, Rush and Planet X, though I also hear some occassional similarities to Niacin, Jordan Rudess, and Happy The Man.

With some guest musicians (guitars and wordless vocals) on some tracks, they produce a very full sound. The compositions are all strong, very interesting and well-played. Kopecky probably has the most notoriety with his virtuoso bass-playing in other bands (Par Lindh Project, Kopecky, etc.); but Babiak's drumming is Neil Peart-ish top-notch, and with influences and comparisons to Derek Sherinian, Rudess and Wakeman, you can rest assured that Nadkarni's keyboards are superb.

With 65-minutes of non-stop great music, this is a CD that everyone should seek out. Listen to the sound samples on their website, then buy the CD. I hope it's only the first of many from this promising band.