AWAKE - Illumination

\r\nAwake is a British band founded in 2000 and which is often presented by the press as "the saviors of English progressive metal" or "the English Evergrey ".The first given title is rather presumptuous but the second one seems totally justified when the various ingredients of the album, the voice, the riffs, the pomped-up keyboard atmosphere, the melodic passages, all return invariably to Evergrey. Tom S. Englund of Evergrey has done even the production of this album. Advancing to the music personally I find it to be more in the melodic heavy metal fields than to explore the seer progmetal path. The songs aren’t all that long and there are way too many ballads. The guitar lines are heavy and a bit with a dark foundation beneath them while the keyboards keep a most important role in the songs backing up the sound with a strongly melancholic atmosphere. But the changes and the progressiveness or the astonishment of a profound musicianship are obviously lacking from this album just up to the point where you can’t really describe them as a pure progressive metal band. Also when the album was finally over I had this annoying feeling that all this time I was just listening to the same song. Of course I may not be the best judge of this kind of sound yet I can surely distinguish when some music is impressive and well worth and when some music is not. Ending up I would like to comment that Awake may need to lay back a little bit from their Evergrey ventures and try something of their own ability and structure. \r\n

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\r\n\r\nVaso "Necromass" Prassa \r\n

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