It’s a funny thing, but everyone who listens to music as more
\nthan just background noise while stuck in traffic ends up thinking
\nthat some artist or group sounds like some other artist or group.
\nIf it’s happened to you, then you know what I’m talking about. If
\nit hasn’t happened to you, don’t worry… it’ll catch up.<\/p>\n
So I shouldn’t have been surprised when I started listening to
\nSteel Prophet’s latest release
\nDark Hallucinations<\/i>; halfway through I found myself asking,
\n“Did I pop in a Queensryche CD by mistake?”<\/p>\n
Of course, Steel Prophet is a progressive metal band who have
\ntheir own unique sound and song structure… but damned if they
\ndon’t sound like Queensryche from time to time. While there is some
\ngenuinely entertaining music on this album, there are other times
\nwhere the energy lags a bit.<\/p>\n
Led by vocalist Rick Mythiasin and guitarist\/founding member
\nSteve Kachinsky Blackmoor, Steel Prophet combines elements of
\nmetal, thrash and progressive rock into its sound. But if you read
\nthe song titles (at least on my advance copy), there seems to be a
\nstory line tying some of the album’s nine tracks together. Fine and
\ndandy – but the songs jump from chapter one to chapter five, then
\nback to chapter two! The hell with trying to decipher any story
\nline.<\/p>\n
Musically, Steel Prophet do have many things going for them –
\nnamely, the element of surprise. You never can be sure when the
\nband is going to jump from a progressive riff into a double-bass
\npumping speed metal section. Some might find this to be a tad
\nannoying; I, however, found it interesting that they would shift
\nmusical gears like this.<\/p>\n
Some of the tracks, like “New Life” and “We Are Not Alone,”
\nstand out as being some of the band’s best work on
\nDark Hallucinations<\/i>. But on other tracks, it’s sometimes
\nhard to keep one’s head focused on the music. It’s almost as if the
\nmusic on tracks like “Strange Encounter” and “Betrayal” try to take
\nyou out of the game – and that, I don’t think, was Steel Prophet’s
\nintention.<\/p>\n
The only other thing I’d call Steel Prophet to task for is the
\nabrupt ending to the album, on “Spectres”. It’s almost as if the
\nsong had more life left in it, but it comes to a screeching halt.
\nWhy not let the song end on its own terms?<\/p>\n
Still,
\nDark Hallucinations<\/i> is an album that should appeal to many
\nfans of different genres of music. It is the kind of album that
\ncould get a hardcore headbanger interested in progressive rock,
\nwhile it could open the eyes of other listeners to the world of
\nmetal. Just be ready to give this disk anywhere from two to four
\nlistens before you really start getting into it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27650,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[6292],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-39025","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-steel-prophet","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39025\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=39025"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=39025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}