MONOLITH

US based band ETHEREAL ARCHITECT was formed back in 2005, and they released their debut album "Dissension" two years later. Since then they have been an active live unit, and recently got themselves a new bassist in the shape of Thad Stevens. "Monolith" is their second full length production, and was self released in 2012.

The musicians of Ethereal Architect have made themselves a strong, interesting and relatively innovative album with their second effort "Monolith". Aggressive yet technical progressive metal with room for gentler nuances and careful details, with room for melody as well as energy and a lead vocalist that provides a strong and distinct melodic dimension whenever the careful keyboard textures don't cater for that part of the proceedings. This is quirky, fairly unpredictable yet also likeable and driving progressive metal. A band well worth investigating if you tend to enjoy progressive metal more closely related in sound to old school thrash than to progressive rock yet closer to the latter in terms of compositional structure and arrangements.

Ethereal Architect is a technical progressive metal band from Austin/Texas - USA with 2 albums under their belt. The second offer from 2012 named simply Monolith is a serious piece of work in this genre. This sophomore release is solid as rock, really kick ass pieces, catchy as hell and top notch musicinship. Something that worth mentioning right from the start is the voice of Adam Contreras. Well he simply shines here, he has a very powerful tone, very elastic voice, he can sing in a very diffrent ways from deep moments to joyful parts, all vocal lines are to me jaw dropping, very good vocalist, in fact one of the best I've heared so far in prog metal zone. The pieces are very well crafted, full of unexpected twists and turns, the rhythmic section is killer. The album overall might be considered guitar driven type of prog metal, David Glass the guitarist is all over the place, having some spectacular moments, complicated passages for sure, but aswell some keyboards appear here and there also provided by David Glass. All musicians work in a perfect unison, awesome interludes between them with great inventive arangements - this is a team work for sure. Highlights for me, Mercury a very progressive tune from the album with sudden tempo changes and impressive vocal delivery, Revolution is another killer tune with blistering moments and mid tempo almost balladesque Obscure with nice smooth elegant vocal lines and great instrumental parts. All in all this is a very worthy album by this unfairly unnoticed band, Ethereal Architect is very talented outfit, one of the best in last years in this realm that didn't get so far the credits they desearve. I personaly love the album overall better then previous work, and have no complains about. Recommended for sure and easy 4 stars, really impressed. For fans of Suspyre, Communic from Denmark, etc