THE SCREAMS EMPIRE

Fun though the debut Silver Key album was, The Silent Empire exhibits that dreaded "sophomore slump" that so many acts fall prey to. Perhaps they simply rushed themselves to try and knock something out to sustain the momentum established by that debut, or perhaps their first release used up most of their really strong ideas and they haven't yet come up with sufficient new ones to really keep things interesting over the course of an album. (Given that they've apparently been about in one form or another since 1992, you'd think they'd have more top-flight compositions than just the stuff on the debut, but then again they spent much of that time as a Marillion/Fish tribute act.)

Either way, The Screams Empire isn't actively bad, it's just lukewarm - neo-prog music that's just kind of there and doesn't really do anything especially exciting. Hopefully they will pull it together again for their next release.