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Threshold - Wounded Land CD (album) cover

WOUNDED LAND

Threshold

 

Progressive Metal

3.81 | 193 ratings

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Nightfly
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator
4 stars Threshold have long been regarded as the UK's finest exponent of the Prog Metal genre but to be honest they haven't had a lot of competition in that field. But taking nothing away from Threshold, they are an excellent band having produced many excellent albums since this, Wounded Land, their 1993 debut and are one of the best bands the UK has produced in the last 20 years period.

Wounded Land is a solid debut with a strong ecological theme running through many of the tracks before it was fashionable to be concerned about the state of the planet. The twin guitar attack of Karl Groom and Nick Midson are well to the fore as would be expected in Prog Metal but still leave plenty of room for Richard West's keyboards to cut through, sounding better and more to the fore here incidentally than on some of the bands recent releases. Threshold struggled in their earlier days to keep the same Vocalist and Drummer for long. Here Damian Wilson is on vocals and an excellent singer he is too. He would leave however before the follow up Psychedelicatessen was released but return again for Extinct Instinct before leaving once again (interestingly he is now helping the band out again on tour since the departure of "Mac"). Solid Drumming is supplied by Tony Grinham although the Drum sound is a little artificial. Jon Jeary, also a solid player provides Bass.

One of the good things about Threshold is their ability to combine good Metal riffs without losing sight of a strong melody which they show here on album opener Consume to Live, one of the best tracks on offer. However album highlight belongs to the excellent Sanity's End. At ten minutes long it goes through a number of changes from the keyboard dominated intro, the slower pace mid section and the instrumental workout culminating in a great unison Keyboard/Guitar solo. A superb track as good as anything the band have ever done. The problem with having such a good track on an album is that everything else is often overshadowed by it but the band tries hard with fan favourite Paradox and another favourite of mine, the riffy Mother Earth. Siege of Baghdad as the title suggests has an eastern sound to it and as a contrast to the overall heavy nature of the album Keep it With Mine provides a nice acoustic based album closer. Having said that, if you own the remastered version you get the bonus track Intervention, a track which originally appeared on the Si Too compilation in Holland.

When I first decided to review this album I had a 3 star rating in mind, having not listened to it for some time but I had forgotten what an excellent album this really is and is easily worthy of 4 stars.

Nightfly | 4/5 |

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