ORENDA

Minimalism comes in with acoustic guitar, but soon leaves those minimalistic paths. Together with the following ballad As Yesterday this still tends more to an AOR style in the vein of Thunder or Magnum right from the start. Zombified, the first track crossing the ten minute mark, then turns into a way more tricky direction though. From now on ORENDA goes prog with certainty. Finally the hilarious Bridges Of Life comes as an epic gem for sure, also turns out to be a foray through the progressive rock genre in general. And even more if we count a little samba excursion in. A gilmour-esque guitar here, synths a la Derek Sherinian there, some Queen leanings, diverse little references are shimmering through again and again. To sum it up, 'Next' offers heavy art rock with some prog metal leanings, a typical blend of rocking and balladesque moments, including tiny surprises. Very nice!

In this first incarnation there's still a few beginner's symptoms showing through though; and the first and foremost to this is that this band gets too close to what appears to be a main influence for them in expression. On regular intervals the band sounds like Dream Theater rather than just inspired by them; where vocals and instruments alike seemingly does a copy/paste job of sound, expression and stylistic expression alike.

In other words: We're dealing with yet another band exploring vintage-sounding progressive metal. They are good players, the vocalist very good in a LaBrie kind of manner; and the performance is pretty flawless overall. The album is one long concept story broken into more or less logical segments. The concept itself may not be to everybody's taste; dealing with demons, God and humanity - and a tortured soul touching each of the afflicted parts.

Still - if concept albums in general are of interest it's a nice enough venture - in particular if you can't enough of bands exploring the same musical territories as Dream Theater did in the early 90's.