ENTER BY THE TWELFTH GATE

Michael Pinella is the keyboardplayer of the famous Symphony X and actually that is the reason why I bought this album. Because I'm a big Symphony X fan and Pinella is an important link in the band. I got most impressed with him when I saw the band live in Amsterdam (2002) and Michael Pinella did the entire orchestral part of The Odyssey on his keyboards reaching at least 90% of the original studio version of the song, an incredible performance.

Since I saw him doing that my admiration had of course increased and when you see a solo effort from him in the store I think it's only logical to buy it. I expected not even too much of it. Because he has no supporting musicians on this album, he is doing 100% of the job here and I don't think it's really fair to expect something like the best material of Symphony X. That would have been simply unbelievable. But I did expect a lot of decent tracks and I can say Michael did succeed in producing those. After two fine warming up songs we come to a true and honest (well ...) piano concerto ! It's one of 5 minutes (mov.1) but I really like it because I'm also a classical music lover so I can appreciate a thing like this. At times this song contains some resembling moments with V and Odyssey but just a few notes. Enter by the 12th Gate (title track) is another classical-like track, Pinella is really good at these things ! Next one, Falling from the Sky contains once again some SX elements, it's really recognizable here. Welcome to my Daydream is a bit more in pop-style than classical, another decent track. Next two are movements 2 & 3 of his piano concerto. Altogether a short piano concerto but I think it's ok. I can't really say from this point of the album that the best is yet to come, that would be exaggerated but the rest of the tracks are nice/good making the overall performance of Pinella on this album good/very good. Which means it's close to a 4 starrating. But that is overdone really I have to admit, so 3 (3,4). Recommended for Symphony X fans who especially admire Pinella's contribution.

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