Artist: Spyral
Title: Volcano
Produced by: Ralf Bronckhorst and Thomas Palm
Label/ Date: 3-Owls records/Progrock Records/ 2002
In many places, the vocals are somewhat reminiscent of Geoff Mann in places. The sound is almost as if Geoff were in a metal band rather than Twelfth Night. This can be heard especially in the song "Loyalty", which is one of the more pleasant arranged songs on Volcano. One of my concerns is that the guitars seem to be very out of place once they go into the "dirty" mode. There's is just no build up, the razor-edged guitars just appear.
The other concern, although not as important as the first, is the overall sound is stuck somewhere between 80's hard rock, neo prog and prog-metal. Which come off like a misplaced and very chaotic direction or lack of. Hopefully Spyral's next offering will be more polished and structured. Possibly maybe the band would pay more attention to the instrumentation especially if they pick a genre. My opinion is that, they should strip away most of that metal sound, thus making them a wonderful sounding neo/symph band that I'm sure would be welcomed by more prog fans. With all the critcism, there are some very good melodies tat need to be nurtured, not hidden. Spyral is a band to watch!
~Ron for ProgNaut.com [August 17th, 2003]
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