Seventh Wonder

a band that listened too much to DT's 'Images and Words'.

Fantastic band, I don't think they've ever released a bad album.

Islandstone wrote: Good band, happy to see a thread about them. I don't own any of their albums(yet), as they are hard to find in stores here in Norway. Spotify comes to the rescue... Yes, Tommy is an awesome vocalist, in a band with impressive musicians.  I do think they get too "poppy" sometimes,though; listen to the chorus of "Long way home" from The Great Escape for example.

They do go occasionally poppy, but they do add their signature sound to it, and they do it so much better than everyone else, I actually don't really have a problem with it! Go figure, cause usually I'm burning pop songs at the stake. And can you get any of the albums on Amazon out there?

Hello SW fans!  The ONLY reason this band is not my absolute #1 favorite is that they only have 4 albums....


Anybody feeling cautiously optimistic about the Kamelot news and how it might affect Seventh Wonder?

Oh, I just realized that spam post was over a year old.

Good and talented band, but drinks too much from Dream Theater, A.C.T. and Symphony Xfor inspiration IMO, which means: they don't sound original at all.  I, for one, don't like them too much. 

dtguitarfan wrote: ^ Shows how much you understand. They have quite a distinct methodology and sound.

I'm admitedly not a fan, but I can easily recognise their influences and they are so damn obvious it sometimes bears similarities with plagiarism, as far as I can tell from their latest album.

For example, Wiseman painfully remembers Symphony X's 2002 album The Odyssey, as well as other songs, such as The Anglemaker and Move on Though. The latter also has some mixture of 90's SX around Divine Wings, as does the song Long Way Home, which is very similarly composed as Divine Wings "ballads". There's also some considerable dose of AOR/melodic rock there as well.

The A.C.T. influence is mainly focused on the song Alley Cat, even though I can still hear some things here and there throughout the album.

There is also some Dream Theater influence in the guitar work and how the musical phrases develop mimicking Jonh Petrucci's.

i'm pretty sure there's something else that I still can't quite put my finger on.

The most "original" songs on the album IMO are King of Whitewater and the epic, being the first still somewhat reminescent of the said influences. The epic, though, is some really good piece of prog metal, mostly original, though I can still sense SX's V - Mythology Suite all over it.

That said, I have only checked their latest album and, for the most part, this band seems to be the SX equivalent to Pagan's Mind plagiarism to DT.

dtguitarfan wrote: CCVP wrote: dtguitarfan wrote: ^ Shows how much you understand. They have quite a distinct methodology and sound. I'm admitedly not a fan, but I can easily recognise their influences and they are so damn obvious it sometimes bears similarities with plagiarism, as far as I can tell from their latest album. For example, Wiseman painfully remembers Symphony X's 2002 album The Odyssey, as well as other songs, such as The Anglemaker and Move on Though. The latter also has some mixture of 90's SX around Divine Wings, as does the song Long Way Home, which is very similarly composed as Divine Wings "ballads". There's also some considerable dose of AOR/melodic rock there as well. The A.C.T. influence is mainly focused on the song Alley Cat, even though I can still hear some things here and there throughout the album. There is also some Dream Theater influence in the guitar work and how the musical phrases develop mimicking Jonh Petrucci's. i'm pretty sure there's something else that I still can't quite put my finger on. The most "original" songs on the album IMO are King of Whitewater and the epic, being the first still somewhat reminescent of the said influences. The epic, though, is some really good piece of prog metal, mostly original, though I can still sense SX's V - Mythology Suite all over it. That said, I have only checked their latest album and, for the most part, this band seems to be the SX equivalent to Pagan's Mind plagiarism to DT. SO...WHAT.  Give me a band you like and I'm sure I can come up with comparisons to other things.  That doesn't mean they are not a good band, and it doesn't mean they don't have their own unique and distinct style.  Every band is influenced by someone.  Those songs you mentioned?  I really don't hear the influences you're talking about.  I mean, kind of...MAYBE.  Plagiarism?  Not in any way, shape or form, sorry. Seventh Wonder has this method I find incredibly unique where Tommy Karevik, the singer, almost sounds like he is separated from the band - almost like he is singing a melody for a pop song on top of their complex poly-rhythmic layers.  I played some SW for someone who had never heard them the other day and he immediately noticed this too.  If you can't hear that and don't think it's unique, then don't listen.  Plain and simple. And on top of this unique element, Andreas Blomqvist is, I believe, THE best bassist in rock.  My rakings for bassist would go: Victor Wooten Andreas Blomqvist Billy Sheehan

First of all, you should know that I don't think they are bad, as I mentioned in my very first post:

[Seventh Wonder is a]Good and talented band

However, thet does not makes them special either and you should be realizing that. I too have my share of bands that people say they are derivative or plagiarists (such as Glass Hammer or Triumvirat), but that does not keep me from both enjoying them and acknologing their "weaknesses".

As for the comnpositioning techniques, that does not make them unique as well. It may be different from the traditional pop or mainstream music compositioning, but that's fairly commonplace for progressive rock. If I recall correctly, Yes was quite proficient at that, among the classic progressive rock bands.

Regarding my favorite bands, I don't know about all of them having some very noticeable influence from another artists/band in particular, because many of them are classical prog rock bands and I would have to go even further back, which I don't intend to, but others do have very obvious influences that, at times, bear similarities with plagiarism. Dream Theater, for example (my all-time favorite band, alongside Pink Floyd) is a great example of that: starting in Falling into Infinity all their albums have a strong background influence of some sort (not counting that John Petrucci at many times sounds like Steve Morse): Falling into Infinity is VERY MUCH influenced by Queesnryche's album Promised Land; Scenes from a Memory is VERY MUCH infleunced by Queensryche's Operation Mindcrime and has lines in Through my Words that are the very same as the begining of the title track of Pink Floyd's album Final Cut.

Just my two cents.

There are 12 notes in a chromatic scale.  When you play as many notes a minute as fast as Seventh Wonder does, you're bound to have a few in common with another artist or two.

Ambient Hurricanes wrote: There's nothing wrong with voicing a criticism of an artist here

Except that it seems that's all anyone does around here any more, and it's getting quite tiring.  "Yes sucks."  "Rush sucks."  "Jethro Tull sucks."  "Dream Theater sucks."  "Pink Floyd sucks."  It seems all anyone ever DOES in this forum any more is trash bands, no matter who they are.  I for one think it should be banned from the appreciation threads - they should be havens where one doesn't have to put up with that crap.