PINNACLE

Pinnacle's roots go back in 1997, when drummer Greg Jones met Karl Eisenhart in a coffee house, where he played acoustic music.His ''Steve Morse'' T-shirt was enough for Greg to speak to him and so begins the collaboration between the two men.Initially the played with bassist JP Capiello, who was soon replaced by mullti-instrumentalist Bill Fox.As with many bands, they started playing covers of Yes, Rush, Jethro Tull and other huge acts of the past, before putting together material for an original release.They recorded their debut, meeting each other every Tuesday at EverythingToExcess Studios between November 02' and May 03, eventually releasing their first album ''A man's reach'' in 2003.

Pinnacle's sound is obviously influenced by the Power Rock of RUSH with a slight vibe from 70's US Heavy/Hard Rock and recalls modern acts such as TILES, BOLUS or ENCHANT.The style of the trio is strongly based on Eisenhart's/Fox'es guitars with little use of synths here and there to create a more rich sound.Most of the tracks are quite groovy with strong riffs, plenty of changes and interesting solos in mid-length and quite accesible forms.The atmosphere ranges from aggressive to slightly spacey, exploring also the territories inbetween.Vocals are also decent, without being anything close to mindblowing.Good thing is Pinnacle's compositions are fairly memorable despite the diverse guitar stylings.On the other the hand the production sounds a bit flat and this guitar-driven style seem to need sometimes a breeze of fresh air.Notice the lovely cover of Jethro Tull's ''Minstrel In the Gallery'' as the closing composition of this album.

RUSH-inspired Power/Prog Rock is what Pinnacle have to offer in this first effort of the trio and what they do, they do it really good.Recommended, especially if you love strongly guitar-led still challenging material.

Pinnacle is a heavy prog band from USA with two albums released so far. This trio manage to capture my attention by their second album from 2006 named Meld. Energic and noodly heavy prog album with some great instrumental sections, and aswell the voice is pretty ok. Pinnacle have their own sound I think even they are in same category with Tiles, Rush or Variant, almost same aproach in music with twisted tempo changes, some fine guita works and quite intresting bass lines, very busy instrument on this album. I also like a lot the drums, Greg Jones is very sure of his instrument creating some great chops. Even the album is long over an hour it doesn't contain any mediocre or boring moments, contrary has plenty of intresting arrangements well performed. The forte pieces are definetly the opening track Information Overload - 10 min of pure bliss, engaging moments , powerful musicianship. Another worthy piece is the instrumental Built For Speed another great tune that shown how great is the guitar parts. Some sporadicaly and well integrated in the overall sound are the keybords, who has a second role here after the guitar but some nice passages are on The Deepest Sea. The album ends with an epic of nearly 19 min of good playing intresting ideas and top notch production. Talking about production the album was mastered, mixed and produced by Shadow Gallery bass player Carl Cadden James with the help from the band. Really nice album that desearves from me 3-3.5 stars.