THE SEVENTH DEGREE OF SEPARATION

I honestly cannot believe that anyone would consider this a masterpiece! This is probably the most disappointing album I've heard this year (and i thought Opeth's Heritage could not be topped in that category).

Truthfully, Arena has set the bar high with their 4 previous releases, so my disappointment may in part come from high expectations. What is it about "the seventh degree of separation" that causes my disappointment?

As you all know Arena has a new singer: Paul Manzi. Is this guy a bad singer? No not at all. In fact I saw them live about a month ago, and I was thoroughly impressed with his singing. The problem however is that in my opinion the music is now tailored to the vocals, instead of the other way around, which used to be the case. Because of this, the ingenuity of the instumental parts has all but disappeared. As a result, this is not really a progressive album anymore, more like a solid hard rock album. As stated before this is a rather dull sounding album, and after a few listens only song 3-5 would sort of stick. The rest of the songs just gave me a "meh" feeling.

Here's to hoping this is an incidental miss.