REST IN KEYS

Babis (Bob) Katsionis is one hell of great keyboard player in last decade in prog metal realm but sadly not enough well known worldwide. I've been looking to his solo career since his first album from 2002 reaching to his latest offer from 2012 named rest in keys. Well, this is a good towards great prog metal album, but with this release, at least for my ears he incorporated neo classical parts more then ever in his music. Some respected guest musicicns here like the excellent guitarist of Shadow Gallery - Gary Wehrkamp, female voice Liv Kristine from Leaves' Eyes and an ex female vocalist of the gret defunct Theatre of Tragedy and many more guests all doing a fine job in overall sound. I like this new album of this great greek keyboardist but I don't think is his best, I prefere his first two albums to be his most acomplished album with a plus on the first one who is a real gem of a prog metal album, keyboard dominated prog metal. Here we have neo classical metal not far from Stratovarius fame combined with Dream Theater instrumental parts, blistering keyboards, bombastic passages and overall an amazing technique on each musician. There are 11 pieces from wich 8 are instrumentals and the rest of 3 has some decent but not great vocal passages. Epirus Rising for me is the best from here, an instrumental tune kinda short in lenght around 4 minutes, but here Katsionis really shines, he also added some traditional greek music and in combination with keyboard driving prog metal is a damn fine result, really awesome piece. All in all a good release, Katsionis is still in big form, after more then a decade releasing albums under his name, also has many colaborations with many bands in same time, so a busy musician, but his lates album Rest in keys is not his best album for sure, at least for me. 3 rounded to 3.5 stars. I like his style and for that reason I will keep an eye of his future releases.