THE EDGE

Eternity X, the american progressive metal band hailing from New Jersey, is a fairly unknown fice-piece whose only relevant album to the progressive metal scene is this album specifically, named The Edge, which was last one released by the band before disbanding.

The Edge, over the years, have achieved some kind of cult following and, among the fan circles and the following, it is (obviously) held in high regard. Because of that, I was somehow compelled to buy it when the opportunity arose, about a year ago, over the internet. Right after ariving at my door, I could see that this album was bound to be something different than what I have expected, due to the state of the album's jewlcase, that showed that this album in particular has had a considerable amount of hand-to-hand trade mileage.

Listening the album proved reavealing enough for the reason why it's case was in such a bad shape: although the instrumental passages not being so bad (in most songs), the vocals definitely ruin whatever achievement the instrumental work made, because the main singer, and to a lesser degree the backing vocals, is (or are) plainly out of tune for most (if not all) of the album. He just cannot follow a single musical line without being untuned. it was quite clear why people wanted to get rid of the album before it reached me.

You could explain it by claiming that this is his style of singing, but in my opinion that is a lazy, condescending and unprofessional way to justify the unforgivable, specially because he was in a studio, and not in a live gig, and had the possibility of actually try and record his parts in tune. This worst performances are: Fly Away, Imaginarium, The Edge of Madness (which is almost unlistenable) and Rejection. It is really painful to sit thought an hour and 13 minutes of this.

The instrumental parts are, for the most part, not so bad. However, there are passages throughout the album where you can clearly notice that the musicians are obviously overestimating their own playing abilities (specially the guitarrist), trying to play faster that they are actually capable of. That, however, is not too obvious because much of the album's songs are ballads or mid-tempo songs.

Style-wise, Eternity X also slips and falls hard. Their music is incredibly dated, managing to be even more dated than Images & Words and Shadow Gallery's self titled debut, which is quite an accomplishment since The Edge was released practically half a decade after those albums. Another grave style issue that I have with this band is that they are too similar to Shadow Gallery for their own good. Hell, even the singer's vocal timbre is amazingly close to Mike Baker's on Shadow Gallery's first two albums, which probably served as a major sources of inspiration, judging by the way this album sound.

About the concept in which the whole album revolves, the initial idea of making an album about the weight or the influence of heaven and hell over the life of a person was very interesting, although it was already literally made thousands of times before by other artists. However, the execution of such an interesting idea by the band was an unfortunate disaster.

Grade and Final Thoughts

Eternity X's The Edge is really an album that leaves me on the edge: average cheesy and dated (progressive) heavy metal music with one of the worst vocal performances I have ever listened in rock or heavy metal. Just for comparison, the vocals here are almost as bad (if not worse) than LaBrie's live performaces circa the late 90's, with the difference that LaBrie rupted his vocal cords in late 1994 and decided to keep on singing.

The similarities between The Edge and Shadow Gallery's first and second albums and the huge lengh of the album do not help at all in the band's rating.

Just one last word of advice: be careful when buying any Eternity X album.

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