BEHIND THE MASK

Vigilance is one of the forgotten and unknown progressive metal bands from Germany. They manage to release only 2 albums in late '90's and then gone into oblivion. First album named Behind the mask released in 1996 and issued by the excellent lable Music is Intelligence proves that Vigilance had potential in prog metal realm but somehow they've lost along the highway couple of years later. They play a kind of progressive metal tipical german in sound, teutonic how I like to call it who rely more on guitars and vocals, but aswell the keybords are also good and have some nice moments. The album is little over an hour with quite long pieces, the best are the title track and Calls over ashes, the rest are also ok , if nothing is groundbreaking here. Pleasent prog metal with vocalist sounds sometime to in front sometimes in comparation witht the instruments, good voice but not fantastic. Some complex passages appera on longer pieces, nice and solid guitar solos combined with keybords. Overall ok, nothing is great but is enjoyble, a plus for the cover art and design of the CD. 3 stars