THE MUSIC THAT WILL HEAL THE WORLD

Italian band Twinspirits was formed and is lead by keyboard player Daniele Liverani. From the writings I've seen on the bands homepage as well as some citations other places it seems he's a pretty well known guy. But don't despair if you aren't familiar with him though, neither was I before I got this CD to review. Anyhow, this is Liverani's band; and he has made a band with mostly younger musicians. The musicians are all talented, vocalist Sören being the raw talent, guitarist Tommy sounding like a more developed one, and the rest of the guys in between those two on the development ladder.

Musically it seems like the band, or perhaps the band leader, is on a mission to fuse melodic hard rock and prog metal into a new type of music, trying to make what I'd suggest should be called progressive hair metal. Which I'm all for personally, as this kind of music would certainly boost the commercial appeal of progressive music. Although the end result probably won't heal the world when it has been fully developed, it may bring some much wanted healing to the Billboard charts.

As for musical inspiration, AOR and melodic hair metal can be named in general, and the metal bits here mainly seems to come from Dream Theater; although Iron Maiden and Manowar seems to be bands this group are familiar with as well.

The end result on this release are songs that are highly melodic, where the synths are ever- present in the soundscapes, underscoring guitars as well as floating above the other instruments in the mix, strengthening melody lines and creating at times really epic- sounding moods. The guitars gives us nice melodies when played acoustically, short and drawn out chords as well as slow to mid-paced riffs and riff patterns. The guitar sound has been polished well, even when playing some rather gritty sounding riffs there's hardly any raw edges to the sound, resulting in a sound that is commercially appealing to non- metalheads while still sounding interesting enough to the metal fans.

Still, this album ends up as being more promising than good, though. Some elements are still lacking here.

One of the weak points here are the vocals. Sören has a nice voice, but he needs to develop it. Very much a raw talent; it's fairly easy to tell that he has the makings of a very good general purpose rock vocalist that could sing ballads as well as aggressive metal tracks with ease. It's just as easy to hear that he has a fair amount of work that needs to be done before he'll do it well all the time.

Another element that is lacking is good songs. Most of the songs here contain quite a few very good elements, some real good atmospheres, moods and licks are to be found. The chorus sections are rather weak though, and some elements seem to be rather pointless as well. The main weakness of the songs here are the length, though. When most songs stretch beyond the 7 minute mark, the songs should contain some pretty strong moods and atmospheres to stay interesting, and too much repetition of themes will become boring for many listeners.

There's much talent and lots of promise on this release, but for me this band isn't quite there yet - nice try, but no cigar. Yet. It'll be very interesting to see what this band has developed into next time around, though. There's enough talent and skill here for this band to end up as a commercial giant sometime in the future.