THE EYE OF FIRE AND FEAR

Ben Asaro hails from New York City, primarly a singer and guitarist, involved basically in several Heavy Metal projects like Phantom Isle, Twilight Odyssey and Urshurak.As Follows started initially as a side project of Urshurak, but evolved into a one-man band with Asaro measuring his talent on progressive compositions and releasing his debut album ''The eye of fire and fear'' in April 2014, a digital download on the bandcamp page.He arranged, sung and played all the displayed material, receiving some help on vocals by Gary Pickard, member of another New York City-based Metal group, Nevereven.

Despite being his first serious attempt in the Progressive Rock genre, ''The eye of fire and fear'' sees Asaro taking a huge step by recording two massive, over 20-min. long epics, apparently summing up a 50+min. concept work.It was quite reasonable that this had its certain flaws next to very interesting stuff, but overall the music is pretty cool.Both pieces are mostly guitar-driven with occasional synth- and organ dressing and some scarce Mellotron samplers and electric piano, sounding as a Heavy Prog album, sinking pretty often into some sort of spaciness and PINK FLOYD/PORCUPINE TRE-like atmospheres.Asaro does a great job on guitar with a set of sparkling riffs, slow-tempo, majestic rhythmic parts and some dynamic solos, surrounded by keyboard backgrounds and a few electronics pinches, sometimes rockin' quite hard, while others setting a spacious and cinematic enviroment.I find some of his ideas to be extended without any particular reason, but the album's atmospheric variations are very enganging and the result is far from tiring.The second piece especially sounds somewhere between RUSH, GONG, PINK FLOYD and contemporary Space Rockers FONYA, even recalling MIKE OLDFIELD in the lighter parts, the first one is more reto-sounding due to the sporadic organ, but overall expect a contemporary Prog Rock effort with the electric guitar in evidence.

Nice first attempt by Asaro, far from flawless, but definitely interesting, featuring some great guitar work and unique atmospheric parts.Recommended, especially if you love Rush, Porcupine Tree and Pink Floyd.