LEGACY

This is not the best Shadow Gallery album ... but it get's a high score from me because of the brilliant epic and the first track. Colors might be the weakest track, but given some time it begins to grow on you as well.

Mike Baker (lead & backing vocals), Carl Cadden-James (bass, vocals, flute) Brendt Allman (guitars, vocals), Chris Ingles (keyboards), Joe Novelo (drums), and Gary Wehrkamp (guitars, keyboards, vocals & bass) are Shadow Gallery. There are two words that define the imagery created by progressive rock ... savage beauty. With Legacy, the group's fourth release, you will visit places of magnificence and then quickly find a change of scenery that can be harsh and unrelenting. That is what progressive rock music is. The premise of songs that build upon each other is the facility of each composition to open the door to a layered song structure, with the ever- changing human emotions the mirror for the music. This would apply with any style of music; you will find that this is just slightly more intense with prog rock.

You can tell right from the outset of the first song "Cliffhanger" that this band has reached a level of maturity that gives them extremely good focus. "Colors" will catch you off guard, as they sound like a totally different group. The song sounds ready made to enter the charts with a bullet to the top. It's not pop, mind you, it's rock, but with a more consistent definition and purpose. There is a clear message being conveyed, and the music supports that with a mainstream (forgive me) flow not found on any of the other tracks. I really enjoyed it, but I also welcomed the return of the ever-changing ups and downs and complexities that are the mark of the genre. They decide to use a popular trick on the curtain closer "First Light", there is a long pause at around the twenty-four minute mark, giving the impression that the CD is complete, then a few minutes later the music starts again, and the song is over. Before it finally ends, over thirty-two minutes have passed. My word, that's an album's worth of material for some bands.

Awe-inspiring groups like Shadow Gallery make it easy for a listener to foresee new and exciting sounds on a regular basis. I have said this before ... some of the best music and talent can be found at the Magna Carta label.

They are an indie label with major acts. It's a deadly combination that cannot be matched. All of the major labels that can't hold a candle to this kind of talent would be well advised to take a look at labels like Magna Carta. They hold the trump card. The future of music belongs to the independent bands, and the labels that promote them. This is one of many CDs that will give valid evidence of that fact.

As usual, Shadow Gallery has always produced good progressive metal album, so is the case with "Legacy" which was released 2001. From musicality point of view, the band's music is mature already with this album. From personal preference point of view, I'd rather listen to "Tyranny" than this album even though "Legacy" is not a bad album at all. I don't know I feel that something is missing with this album. It's probably due to the existence of ballad pop song that does not attract me at all. No doubt, "Cliffhanger" (13:05) is an excellent epic as it casts the soul of Shadow Gallery's music. The song contains melodic segments with technically skilled guitar work through excellent riffs and stunning solo, solid bass lines, machine-gun drum work, nice music harmony and great vocals. Structurally, this is the track that any progressive metal fan would like to enjoy as it combines various styles with high and low points. The keyboard work is really excellent with some segments remind me to Keith Emerson's work. Hah? Yeah man . you may be surprised that Keith Emerson is now playing progressive metal music. The combination of keyboard punches ang guitar solo is truly powerful.

"Destination Unknown" (7:01) starts mellow with piano and vocal; it's accessible to many ears because it's melodic and slow in tempo. Vocals are excellent. The song moves into higher points with excellent and speedy guitar solo. "Colors" (7:02) is a ballad pop song that I can't believe Shadow Gallery composed this poppy song. I don't like it at all. One star for this song; poorly composed and very loose - many bands can make this kind of stuff. "Society Of The Mind" (5:23) is a rocker with heavy riffs and high register notes voice line. Good track. "Legacy" (5:04) starts off with heavy riffs like typical power metal band augmented with keyboard work. Unique singing style. It's an interesting track to enjoy.The album concludes with an excellent epic "First Light" which consumes 23 minutes of music plus UNNECESSARY silent for approx 10 minutes concludes the album. The epic itself is excellent as it combines various styles and instruments including acoustic guitar. The unnecessary silent portion at the end of the track is annoying, meaningless and useless.

It's a good album that deserves three stars maximum. Keep on proggin' ..!

Peace on earth and mercy mild - GW

For me this isn't nearly as good as "Tyranny" or the follow up "Room V". Lots of good moments of course, but not enough for me to give it 4 stars.

The first song "Cliffhanger 2" opens with some piano and atmosphere. We get some power 1 1/2 minutes in as riffs and vocal melodies come in. Vocals 3 minutes in as the sound gets heavier. Great section. It's spacey 6 1/2 minutes in until a really good bass / drum section takes over. The guitar then comes in ripping it up. This is the best track on here. "Destination Unknown" is ballad-like for the first 3 minutes until the guitar comes in and just goes on and on. Nice. "Colors" is pure, thats the best way I can describe it. It's very uplifting. "Society Of The Mind" has some nice crunchy guitars at times and some good guitar solos as well. This is good driving music.

The song "Legacy" has an interesting story behind it. Gary the guitarist wrote 9 songs for James Labrie's MULLMUZZLER project, and this was one of them that was called "Forever" originally. Anyway James and Gary hooked up again and Gary actually traded two songs in order to get this one back. Joe the drummer really liked the song and it ended up on this record, they just changed the name to"Legacy'". Not surprisingly the drumming is fantastic on this song. I really like the heavy intro as well. Not a fan of the harmonies though. "First Light" may be listed at over 34 minutes but in my opinion this is no epic. I just find it meanders along too much, plus there is that annoying 6 minutes of silence. Hello ?

Good album with some great moments.

SHADOW GALLERY is another one of those bands that used to be one of my favourite ones years ago (and whose records were growing dust on my shelf meanwhile). I'm really wondering how I would describe their music to someone who never heard of them (which I don't consider a shame actually). Maybe as a heavier version of KANSAS or a less complex and less technical type of SYMPHONY X. Be it this way or either I'd rather consider them redundant for both a Prog AND a metal fan. For fans of Kansas-type of music I'd rather recommend to stick to the original or go for the albums released under the name PROTO-KAW. For prog metal fans I'd know many other names to recommend first but certainly not this band. Nonetheless I find their music still moderately enjoyable (as long they don't play this type of "fabric softener-metal" as on their highly acclaimed "Carved In Stone"-album) but more for running in the back and not for an intense listen I've to say.

"Legacy", their 4th album can be considered a decent effort by them with almost any significant changes in their style compared to previous ones. We get offered here at times more powerful and sometimes more ballad-esque quite respectable airplay-friendly melodic metal. Admittedly they've thrown in as well some proggy features as moderately complex guitar/keyboard play and some vocal lines for several voices. There are also two long-tracks (triggering shiny eyes in every prog fan's face after having a quick look at the track list) which wasn't the case at all on their previous album "Tyranny". And in fact those two tracks are by far the best ones on here without being anything really groundbreaking, but nice to listen and offering at least some alternative to the usual simple verse-chorus- verse-chorus pattern shown by the other tracks. There are mainly two things I've to niggle about with this album, that are first the overall quite dull lyrics (unfortunately this applies to all of their albums) and the fact that the final track is actually a bluff package. Because in fact it does not contain almost 35 min of quite good melodic metal but "only" 22 min (which is still okay). The remaining running time is filled up with silence and a so-called (redundant) "hidden track" consisting of boring and pointless pseudo-classical noodling.

Finally I can only say that this is a quite nice record to serve as pleasant background music from time to time but by far not anything to be considered essential in progressive rock (as probably all releases by this band I dare saying). Recommended only to fans of AOR-type of music looking for some slightly more sophisticated stuff!

If you followed Shadow Gallery's career in a chronological order, chances are you heard Tyranny before listening to this one. So, as with me, your first reaction must've been something like "man!... this is not in the same level as Tyranny!"... Because, for sure, following in the footsteps of such a FLAWLESS album as that is no easy task, as with every band that has ever released their "ALBUM"... But after the initial shock, what you have here is a pretty good, at times equally masterful collection of (sadly only) 6 songs....

What striked me the most is the lack of anthemic, superhuman choruses that SG delivered in Tyranny.... As in the follow-up to this one, Room V, the choruses here are nowhere near the level of tracks like "I believe", "Roads of thunder" or "Mystery".... and believe me, one of the greatest assests of SG are their choruses, and honestly, I can't find a band that matches their ability.... But, as usual, the instrumental performance by each individual is amazing, especially from the guitars: SG is mainly a guitar band more than a keyboard band (a la Royal Hunt), and here we have excellent playing courtesy of Wehrkamp and Allman.... But another highlight in this band is Mike Baker: he's truly one of the BEST singers in all prog-metal and in all rock... his is a truly unique voice, a little mellow at times, but very effective and, most of all, GREAT with melody singing....

If we'd have to mention the biggest influence in SG's sound and Baker's singing, for sure we would have to talk about Queensryche, but a lot more "prog"....But never did Tate's band played songs with the beauty that SG's opuses have: even more than their choruses, it's their skills with MELODY that truly make them one of the greatest in all progressive metal (for me, only second to DT). But SG also have an "arena rock" vibe within their sound...

Cliffhanger (10/10), a marvelous song, almost an epic in length, great vocal melodies (as always), courtesy of Carl Cadden-James and Wehrkamp's masterful music skills. It's related to the track of the same name in "Carved in Stone", but this one is better.... a true prog-metal anthem.... the instrumental part asks no favors to Dream Theater's own in terms of quality...great. I just love the doubled guitar solo 3/4 down the song....The end is pure Dream Theater meets Shadow Gallery, this meaning that, while showing clear influences by the New York masters, SG's sound is mostly their own.. The final section is in neo-classic metal style, much ala Royal Hunt and Symphony X....

Destination Unknown (10/10), pure melody, a beautiful piano beginning and a PERFECT performance by Mike Baker... a very theatrical middle section, with lots of amazing choral harmonies... some accuse SG of being "too sacharine", too sweet.... I will say, so what?? We need some beauty in metal from time to time! Near the end a female vocal harmony plays over piano chords and acoustic guitars... A GEM Colors (8/10), the beginnijng of this sound reminds me of Wehrkamp's and Cadden- James'-written Mullmuzzler songs in "Keep it to Yourself".... a great melodic start gives way to a so-so chorus, not as good as SG had us used to... this one sounds a little bit "glam"...

Society Of The Mind (8/10), a short, powerful, driving track... it sweats energy... it bleeds energy... the chorus is a little bit too "arenaish" (as in ARENA-rock, not as in ARENA the band)... The choruses in Tyranny were anthemic yet never cheesy... This one is not cheesy, but lies in the border.

Legacy (10/10) , just amazing. If the latter track was energetic, this one is A TORNADO... it has the force of thousand bikes at night... yeah, listening to this while driving an open car in the midst of the city's blaring, flash-like lights.... this chorus, again, not perfect but ALMOST there... great, great song... really a 9.5/10, but it's so damn frenetic, adrenalin-pumping that we add half a point for that....

First Light (6/10), sadly, the weakest track in the album happens to be the longest, and as it takes more than half the size of the cd, it causes the record to lose a point in the ratings....SG's specialty is not the moustrous epics... leave that to the symphonic-rock masters of old or to today's masters like The Flower Kings... or to other Prog-metal bands for that matter.... SG is at their best in the 7-13 minute ratio.... this one is just TOO long, not coherent at times, and in the midst of the confusion we just lose track of the good vocal melodies that just pass us by without being noticed... and to make things worst, man, THE PAUSE.... more than 10 minutes silence!!! And this is not a "secret" track, for the song's length is LISTED in the booklet as 34 minutes... so when the music stops at 22 minutes, you just wonder "what the hell"... then you wait, you wait... when you are snoozing, beginning to lose conciousness and enter into Freud's Kingdom, the music starts again.... and not good music but mediocre music at that! This song could've been good with a good edition-job.... but even trimmed down to 8 minutes, it just doesn't have enough going for it to say "flawed masterpiece"... just flawed piece, period....

So, a very good album, worthy of its predecessor but almost slipping into 3 stars territory, and only because of the completely botched attempt at a giant epic by Shadow Gallery... but don't let this discourage you from buying this otherwise amazing album! The first 5 tracks are almost Tyranny-level songs.... so get it....

... just have your finger in the FORWARD button when the last song approaches minute 22... or have a book at hand... you'll need it for the pause, it is THAT LONG....

To me is a 4 star album, despite to some reviwers from here. It's true that is not the best they ever done, but has some very good moments like firts track Cliffhanger 2, the best from here and maybe one of the best they ever done, and Society of mind. I think the last track is some how to long, and at some point get bored, but all in all a great album, in Shadow Gallery stile.If you like this band you have to get this one because worth it. I remain to Carved in stone (i think the best ever so far). I always like this band so my rate is 4 stars.

In Carved in Stone I highly praised the terrific Cliffhanger as one of the best songs by Shadow Gallery. This also goes for the opener on this 4th album, Legacy. Cliffhanger II is at least as good as part I, probably better. Because it's longer and this higher length is used for a mindblowing instrumental part I simply can't get enough of. Unfortunately the album continues with a few tracks that is too much of the same we already heard on Tyranny. They are all good even very good songs but they are 99% copies of Tyranny songs so I can't value these too high. Even the first two albums were more varied and more original than this one even though production quality and composition quality is higher on this Legacy release. The title track is more original than the 3 previous ones but is no more than good/very good. The last track is the epical First Light. On itself a very good epic but where the booklet says it's an epic of 34 minutes in reality it appears to be some 18 minutes (3:30-22:00, just over half that time that is !!).

And it's this rediculous phenomenon of hidden tracks that is reaching the deepest level on this album. And it's about time this behaviour is punished. Because even though Shadow Gallery is one of my favourite bands I can do nothing else than subtract 1 star from my rating for this album. When I bought it I thought I was also buying an epic of way more than half an hour. And this appeared to be phoney. This is extremely disappointing. Shadow Gallery had also done this on Carved Stone with the epical Gostship (1 minute of silence followed by 3 minutes of knocking on a door or something) but goes way to far this time. So instead of 4 I give 3 for Legacy.

"Legacy" was the Shadow Gallery album in charge of following up the epic masterpiece "Tyranny", a job that ultimately was well accomplished. For this one, the SG guys partially recreated the combination of clear melodic metal rock, eerie moods and epic overtones that had made the best of "Carved in Stone": they even restored the tracklist's scheme, with a sequel to 'Cliffhager', a closing multi-part suite and a symphonic instrumental stating the real closure after endless sounds of door bells. Ring a bell? All in all, this is not a "Carved in Stone" clone (just like "Room V" was not a "Tyranny" clone either), but the testimony of a band that decided to recapitulate the most prominent stylistic tendencies that had been dominant in their previous three albums. Business as usual regarding compositions and performances: the former are creative, catchy, ambitious but not overwhelmingly so; the latter are proficiently accomplished, Baker's confident singing, the virtuosic guitar and keyboards, the consistent rhythm section, the polished arrangements. All of them work beautifully, with a crystal clear sound production: on the other hand, you can also notice that the level of pyrotechnics is a tad lessened, which probably means that the band were aiming for a more freshening approach to their inherently complex style. Like I said earlier, 'Cliffhanger 2' kicks off the album with a recognizable piano ornament, quickly leading to a dynamic rocking section that alternates "Metropolis"-type Dream Theater and standard bombastic symphonic rock. The sung section 'Hang On' has a sustained rhythm pattern that obviously emulates that of 'Cliffhanger'. The instrumental section 'The Crusher', in turn, is more related to the band's more metal-focused side, and its vibe is different to that of the instrumental section of 'Cliffhanger', it is more controlled in its dexterity. 'Destination Unknown' kicks off from a very different place: introspective, controlled, yet undeniably passionate about the subject of reflection. The beautiful sung lines and choral arrangements successfully complete the main motif's meditative vibe, properly sustained by the piano and the guitars - all these aforesaid elements really are so moving, even stating a consistent build-up for the track's second part. The second part is an amazing symphonic-meets prog metal tour-de-force that states a powerful mixture of Queensrÿche, Kansas, Iron Maiden and "The Wall"-era Pink Floyd, eventually leading to an hypnotic piano motif augmented by soft, soaring orchestrations. This has to be one of the best Wehrkamp/Cadden-James compositions ever, and also, one of Mike Baker's best vocal deliveries ever. 'Colors' is a semi-ballad that may sound as if SG were leaning a bit closer to mainstream retro-rock; well, this is more like an acoustic rock ballad lightened up by a nice touch of good old "Heartbreak Station"-era Cinderella. Since the SG guys are keen on flaunting their sophisticated aura even in their less complex songs, you can picture the majestic magic provided by the orchestrated background and the added slide guitar leads. 'Society of the Mind' also bears that sense of catchiness somehow related to mainstream, but this time it is an up- tempo rocker with pleasant glam rock stints: the frantic metallic interlude, including flashing guitar and synth solos (the one by Ingles, amazing as usual), spice things up all the way through up to the final chorus and closure. Now, what we get from the title track is a major prog metal ride, whose straightforward cadence and creative melodic development anticipate the sort of mood that will be later prevalent in most rockers from the "Room V" album. 'First Light' is the album's final epic, very much dissimilar to 'Ghostship' (I told you, this is not a "CiS" clone). 'First Light' bears a compellingly meditative ambience that pretty related to that of 'Destination Unknown'. A combination of eerie keyboard layers and a mysterious orchestral background makes a nice prelude to the effective main sung section, slow and majestic, at times dominated by acoustic guitars, at times driven by sustained electric guitar riffs. A second sung section is undertaken through an almost pastoral setting. Before the 12 minute mark, a dramatic orchestral build-up sets the stage for the emergence of the bombastic prog- metal section that changes the initial introspective stance for a more assertive one. All in all, the melodic candor is still very present and working greatly. Somewhere around minute 17, the band makes a curious approach to the Savatage standard for a little while before going to more symphonic realms. This section fluidly segues into a reprise of the first acoustic guitar-based motif for the last few minutes. This is a lovely suite, indeed, an extended showcase for SG's ability to use the energy of prog metal as an ingredient for their symphonic prog ideas. After some minutes of silence and some door bell ringing, a Wehrkamp-penned orchestral piece arises as a colorful coda. A nice ending for a special album that might as well grace any good prog collection - "Legacy" is, over and above, an album of rock music made with beauty and intelligence.

[Thank you for the music, Mike, which brought so much joy to us who forever love Shadow Gallery's music.]

Don't cry, just remember

This album harks back (in some ways) to the band's second album Carved In Stone from six years earlier and even though it does not come close to being as great as the masterpiece that was Carved In Stone, Legacy is indeed a very worthy companion. In between these two albums there was Tyranny, which is by many considered to be the band's pinnacle and from the perspective of Tyranny, the present album is often seen as something of a step backwards for Shadow Gallery. This attitude is perhaps understandable to some degree, but for me Legacy is a very good album in its own right and even rivals Tyranny. Taking a step backward is not necessarily a bad thing, especially not if you have such a sublime album as Carved In Stone in your discography.

This album opens with Cliffhanger part 2 which includes some "quotes" from the original Cliffhanger that opened the Carved In Stone album. It is hard to match the original, but this second part is strong. Also like Carved In Stone, Legacy ends with an extended piece. In this case the 20 + minute First Light with some Pink Floyd-ish parts. The four tracks in between are considered weaker by some people, but for me these are some great Kansas-like Symphonic Prog songs with strong melodies and harmony vocals. The title track is ironically the least good track for me on this album.

Perhaps the reputation of this album suffers from the fact that it is less Metal and more Prog? Maybe Metal fans are disappointed in what they hear and Symphonic Prog fans never get to hear it because they are scared off by the 'Metal'-label?

Highly recommended in addition to Carved In Stone and Tyranny