CONSORTIUM PROJECT II: CONTINUUM IN EXTREMIS

Ian Parry's consortium Project is based on a very complicated concept. A parallel Universe in which after the killing of John Kennedy somebody invents a machine which permits instantaneous communications and this leads to a new evily world order.

During a period of 14 years the Dutch-based English vocalist has released 5 chapters of this saga. This is the second.

Well, it could have been the first too as the level and the contents are almost identical. It's prog- metal with clean vocals not too dissimilar from those of Arjen Lucassen's projects (in which he often guests) but with less peaks respect to Ayreon. The music sounds similar to Ayreon but despite the very intriguing concept, from the musical point of view there aren't many things really interesting.

All well played with decent arrangements and pleasant enough, it's a nice album as the first one was, but with no highlights and nothing to be remembered forever. One track that I particularily like in this second chapter is "Mirror Image" which even if sometimes sounds like the 80s longhair bands contains some good ingredients, keyboards in particular, but the good is that it changes very often, like in a rock opera... like Lucassen let's say.

Ian's voice can appear standardized but I have to say that I like it, maybe thanks also to his various collaborations in Lucassen's projects. His voice is familiar to me.

One possible highlight is "Sentiment in Sanctuary", but as I've said, all the songs are at almost the same level.

A perfect fit into the three stars definition.