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3 - The End Is Begun CD (album) cover

THE END IS BEGUN

3

 

Crossover Prog

3.97 | 141 ratings

From Progarchives.com, the ultimate progressive rock music website

Queen By-Tor
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator
4 stars Maybe the end of music is begun, but at least there's still some good stuff left.

Three returns with an album to be reckoned with on this outing. This Crossover band shows that, while risky, it's not impossible to make a good album with hints of pop, even within the progressive realm. The album holds a nice concept that it carries strongly throughout, and even melds some songs together making two or so shorter songs seem much longer. The music itself is solid, with tight playing and a number of notably good melodies that catch the ear of just about any listener. While it does hold a few strong parallels to a couple other recent bands, they still have a sound all their own that makes this alum quite a worthy investment.

The album starts with the semi-intro song, The World Is Born Of Flame, which starts with some nice, quick guitar before the more or less soft vocals come in and serenade the rest of the song until the almost unnoticeable hand off into the next track, The End Is Begun which is where the album starts to get heavier. It is at this point where the sound is comparable to a combination of Coheed and Cambria type vocals and music mixed with a Tool kind of sinisterness. While these similarities may seem to be too close to the other bands in some cases they still have moments of brilliance all their own with warrants quick forgiveness.

Battle Cry is where the almost pop-ishness starts to show. With a very noticeable chorus, and generally catchy verses and music this is a track that shows hard rock bordering on pop. The mix works, however, and the pop doesn't seem to get in the way at all. The same goes for other tracks such as These Iron Bones and the song that sounds like it could be strait out of a mid-90s-MTV-hit-video, Live Entertainment. Both of which are strong songs, particularly (and ironically enough) the latter. Many of the other songs have a slight pop tone, but not enough to deter the normal hard-rock goer, but it does make the music surprisingly widely accessible.

The cd also houses a couple slow moments, unfortunately, the band is better fast. Been To The Future is a nice enough song, nothing to complain about there. Shadow Play is a song that drags on for a bit too long and leans a bit too far towards AOR to feel comfortable on this album. However, because of the strengths in the other songs these two are easily forgiven.

Where the band finds it's more progressive side is (other than the concept) in the final track, The Last Day. A particularly excellent track that sums up the album nicely and does it all in about 7 or so minutes, encapsulating all the themes, and sounds as presented over the course of the album, even hardcore prog heads should find some happiness in this mini-epic.

Conclusion

In closing, this is a great hard-rock album and a good progressive album in terms of new music. Definitely recommended for fans of both Coheed and Cambria, and new music/prog in general. 3.5 stars rounded up for standing out above the rest, especially in this day and age.

Queen By-Tor | 4/5 |

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