LEGACY

"Legacy", Shadow Gallery's follow-up to their masterpiece "Tyranny", deserves its place in any list of top prog metal albums just for "Cliffhanger 2" and "First Light" (excluding the silly stuff after 23:30). But then, it also has "Destination Unknown" and the title track "Legacy" making it another masterpiece in itself. There is not a single weak song on this album. Many people compare all prog metal bands to Dream Theater. I'm sorry to say this (being a big DT fan myself) but Dream Theater does have the tendency to do songs which feel half-hearted just to make their albums longer (as is the norm with this genre)

"Cliffhanger 2..." picks up where the first part (on "Carved in Stone") left off but the instrumetal second half "The Crusher" is (pardon the cliche) truly crushing! Enough said!

As I've said in my review of their debut album, I'm a sucker for long, epic closers...and "First Light" is up there in the top 5 of this list. In fact, its the only 20+-min song since "Echoes" by Pink Floyd that does not have a weak section or moment and that does not start feeling too long...congratulations to the Shadow Gallery guys on a job well done!