THE DANCE OF LIGHT AND SHADE

I haven't submitted a review in a long time but I recently purchased Soul Doubt's debut album "The Dance of Light and Shade" and was so impressed by it that I thought I should do a review especially as it has not been reviewed yet.

This is a quality release in terms of packaging, music and production. I don't listen to Prog Metal that much these days and got this on the basis of a glowing review from my favourite on-line CD vendor. For an independent release the packaging is exceptional, consisting of a double digipack in a slip case with great artwork and booklet with full lyrics. Five out of five for presentation.

The music is also outstanding, there is certainly a Pain of Salvation influence on many of the tracks but they are not clones. I also detect a bit of an Evergrey sound on some tracks particularly the guitar playing.

However, the double album is not a full out prog metal onslaught, much of the album could be classed as Progressive Rock, for example The Nightbringer on Disc 2 (Shade) and many of the tracks on Disc 1 (Light). With 20 tracks I am not going to do a track by track review, just say that even with its 107 minute running time there isn't a weak filler on the entire album. There is plenty of variation throughout the album, no two tracks sound alike unlike some Prog Metal bands that come to mind. The musicianship is superb, great guitar playing and the drummer is excellent just to pick out two, but it is all good !

The vocalist is excellent, no trace of an accent (although accents don't cause me any problem), at times he does sound a lot like Daniel Glidenlow, but there is nothing wrong with that!

I would think that even those who prefer innovative modern progressive rock (I don't mean neo-prog, more like bands such as IO Earth) but tend to steer clear of Prog Metal would find much to like with this release.

I am always reluctant to give a 5 star rating unless the album is a genuine masterpiece, this is probably a 4.5 star album but due to the packaging and variety across the two discs I will round it up to five stars.