TYRANNY OF THERAPY

Put the man on the glass and break the glass

Tyranny of Therapy is the debut LP from the polish prog metal act DIVISION BY ZERO. Music on this album is rather intense and agressive and may be labelled as progressive death metal. There are some influences of bands like Opeth, Pain Of Salvation or Riverside but there's also a touch of original style of Division By Zero.

Tyranny Of Therapy is a concept album with indeed a twisted story. It reflects mental state of a man in extremely helpless situation. He spends a night on self-contemplation. Lyrics written by band's vocalist Sławek Wierny have intellectual depth, there are many ambiguous symbols which makes interpretation very difficult. Album is divided into three parts, represented by intro and two interludes (Evening - Night - Morning).

Album contains 40 minutes of dark, intense progressive metal on a very high quality level. In my opinion there are two outstanding tracks: Self Control (what a riff! Just imagine what must happen on DBZ concerts when they play this track...) and True Peak but the other tracks are also very good. Sławek Wierny is a fantastic vocalist, he can easily sing clear and use death metal growlings, his voice timbre may resemble Mariusz Duda's vocals. Other musicians are also very good, particularly the keyboard player does his job in his own, great way. There are many memorable melodies, great riffs and it's highly recommended to the fans of progressive metal.

Great, intense album. 4.5 stars.

Don't judge a book by its cover.

Welcome to one of the best debuts of 2007. Division By Zero is an obscure progressive metal band from Poland that equally deserves every inch of praise that is now solely bestowed on their fellow country men from Riverside.

Before I start throwing references to other bands at you, I can assure you that this band has a very mature and personal sound. They have accomplished the task to assimilate their influences very well indeed. If you have read any reviews about them, you will have seen names like Opeth, Pain of Salvation and Riverside. All of those are true.

From Riverside they got the feel for melody, the clean sound and the emotive melancholy. From POS and Opeth in particular, they got the ambitious song structures with alternating gruff and clean vocals. Of course, every metal band does that now and it has become as annoying as it is predictable and worn-out. With Division By Zero it works very well though. The singer's gruff voice is very similar to Akerfelt's low register and only used sparingly. The prominent clean vocals are exceptionally strong and have a huge Mike Patton calibre.

Yes indeed, I need to add another reference here. And to me it's the most obvious reference of all: Faith No More. Let's take the 6th track Deadline Meeting as an example, right from the start it screams "Real Thing" Faith No More at you: the dead-catchy thrash metal riffs, the epic keyboards in the background, the adventurous song structures and, as I've come to mention, especially Slawek Wierny's exceptional vocals. Just listen, 2 minutes into the song, how he bends his voice around the metal riffs. You can't get more Patton then that.

To conclude the list of influences I must add that Division By Zero throws in occasional touches of gothic rock to their Faith No More meets Opeth stew. The dark feel of the album brings Evergrey to mind, and given the spooky short spoken interludes, especially the album In Search Of Truth.

I know I may be a bit biased (in the positive sense) to this mix of heartfelt progressive metal with a slightly gothic flavour, so a big 4 stars will be their share. If you are into the 4 bands in bold here, chances are big that Division By Zero might be a band for you.

I so much hope they can confirm and break through to wider audiences with a next album. Let's also hope they find a more inspired album cover artist. I think we've seen this artwork at least a dozen times before. And it doesn't fit the music at all.

"Tyranny of Therapy" is the debut full-length studio album by Polish progressive metal act Division By Zero. The album was released through Insanity Records in May 2007. Division By Zero were formed in 2003. Their original run ended in 2013 when they disbanded. They released two studio albums during their 10 years together. "Tyranny of Therapy" and "Independent Harmony (2010)".

In regards to the material on this album the progressive metal term doesn´t mean progressive metal in the vein of Dream Theater and their ilk. Division By Zero are one of those eclectic progressive metal acts which also include extreme metal elements like occasional growling vocals and they are generally in the harder edged end of the progressive metal scale, although they certainly don´t shy away from melodic moments and more traditional progressive metal traits like tempo- and time signature changes and fast guitar/keyboard harmony runs. Sometimes they remind me of a very heavy version of Riverside.

They are obviously a skilled bunch of guys, who can handle their instruments and lead vocalist Slawek Wierny has a strong and pleasant clean vocal delivery. I´m not as impressed by his extreme vocals, but they get the job done. The material is adventurous and quite dynamic with both loud heavy parts and mellow atmospheric parts. While the song structures extent beyond the regular vers/chorus formula, the tracks are generally still accessible and memorable. So Division By Zero are the type of band who use technical playing and progressive ideas as a means to an end and not to show off or as the central part of their sound.

"Tyranny of Therapy" features a powerful, detailed, and well sounding production, which suits the music perfectly. So all in all it´s a high quality release by the band. Personally I could have done without the extreme metal vocals, when they aren´t more convincing than they are here, but it´s really a minor issue and probably an aquired taste too, so I´d say that a 3.5 - 4 star (75%) rating is still deserved.

(Originally posted on Metal Music Archives)