SYMMETRICAL

Debut album from Italian pompous power metal proggers. From your "pompous power" father you've got over-the-top vocals, bone- crunching production, vaguely fantasy lyrics and straight forward rhythm section. From prog mother - hyperactive keys and ever-morphing melodic lines and song structures.

Their second album, Last embrace to humanity, is better in my opinion, but still keeps with the same general style, so unless you are completist, you'd be happy with the second album. But this is still a quality debut, thankfully the band have around for a while. It's an amalgamation of the various sub-genres influencing prog metal sound - symphonic metal a la Rhapsody (Farewell to stars), cheesy 80s metal (Light speed journey), organ driven 70 s heavy rock with polyphonic vocal (I'll be back some more), even some extreme character vocals (Another shore, thankfully by their second album, like British band Haken, they would this unneccasary aping from gothic bands). By their second album, they would at the same time more proggy and pop, with more refined songwriting, which, honestly, even then feels somewhat chaotic.

Overall, this is clearly ambitious metal, not just metal with some progressive touches, as most of the so-called progressive metal bands are. So I am kind of surprised that Odd Dimension have many reviews on the traditional metal sites and not on progressive sites.