ERA VULGARIS

The music on What Stirs Within is not progressive IMO. The music is basically traditional heavy metal mixed with a more aggressive modern sound. The vocals are both clean and aggressive ( not growling, more hardcore angry). The clean vocals are weak and some times seem out of key while the aggressive singing is much better. In fact it´s one of the few things I enjoy while listening to What Stirs Within.

The very few progressive tendencies limit themselves to something that wants to be a tech metal part in I Must Have Your Brain and a post rock part in the last 11:15 minutes long instrumental Imram. Seriously that´s all. The rest is very ordinary heavy metal with an primarely aggressive singer. The worst thing about the album is the embarressingly weak and uninspired guitar soloing.

Despite the weak guitar solos the musicianship is pretty good and as I mentioned the aggressive vocals are really convincing.

The production is very thin and the guitar sound is very strange sounding. The drums remind me of a certain album: Kreator´s Renewal ( I love that album but strangely enough I think about it listening to this one)

Describing your music as Led Zeppelin playing Death when you sound neither like Led Zeppelin nor like death metal is a pretty strange statement. What Stirs Within is not exactly a catastrophy but it is a very ordinary aggressive heavy metal album and I can´t justify giving it more than 2 stars. It´s needless to say that this album should hold little or no interest to tech metal or extreme prog metal fans.