Carved in Stone
| 1.) Cliffhanger - 8:41 2.) ~ - 0:40 3.) Crystalline Dream - 5:44 4.) ~ - 0:43 5.) Don't Every Cry, Just Remember - 6:29 6.) ~ 1:03 7.) Warcry - 5:59 8.) Celtic Princess - 2:05 9.) Deeper than Life - 4:32 10.) ~ - 0:16 11.) Alaska - 5:18 12.) ~ - 0:18 13 - 19.) Ghostship - 21:56 a.) The Gathering the Night Before - 2:42 b.) Voyage - 1:37 c.) Dead Calm - 2:32 d.) Approaching Storm - 2:24 e.) Storm - 5:38 f.) Enchantment - 3:57 g.) Legend - 2:54 20.) ~ (aka Orchestral Knocking) - 7:24 |
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| As one can imagine, after hearing such a masterpiece as Tyranny (the band's latest), anyone would be quite curious as to the band's previous musical ventures. Perhaps I can't speak for EVERYBODY, but I certainly was, and after realizing the mirracle of this album actually being in a store, I first caught my breath, then raced to the register to pay the extraordinary sum of 15 dollars, get home and...into the stereo, put the cd. Perhaps it wasn't so melodramatic, but facts are facts - I was lucky to find this cd in the store...REALLY lucky, and took advantage. |
| So, after a good, long period of around 2
months, what can I say? The album is truly excellent, perhaps not to the level of Tyranny,
but excellent nonetheless, and despite a couple of caveats, provides a great hour+ of
music. Let me speak out my problems first, so as to provide the pros later, without a
single negative interruption - the drummer really sucks; his work is very stiff and stale,
and it's like that on every track - the music is not really heavy enough where this would
seem like a really big problem, but it's defenitely quite annoying - something to get used
to over a period of time. There's also the matter of the wasted minutes - a good 5 1/2
occupied by the extremely boring 'Alaska' - a country/prog combination which will actually
NOT put you to sleep just because it's so bad; there's also the inexplicable 7+ minute
knocking/orchestra thing at the end...it's boring as hell, and there's no way I'm
listening to it again. Now, the good stuff...most of the other songs are great, with some highlights including including 'Warcry' (good piano in the beginning, excellent guitar solo later on), 'Deeper than Life' - a fast, 70's style, prog track. There's also the 22 minute epic at the end - some incredible stuff in there (esp. the mesmerizing piano solo toward the end), but it seems a bit stretched out at times. It has it's mostly minimal problems, but the good far outweigh the bad, and this is one of the (if not THE) disc's main highlight(s). The other 2 incredible pieces are the opener, 'Cliffhanger', and 'Don't Ever Cry, Just Remember', with the former being a mostly mid-paced, epic style narrative with a terrific solo towards the end, and the latter, a truly heartwrenching pseudo-ballad with some incredible vocal work - I love playing this one on my piano... |
There's some more to note
- the lyrics are very thoughtful and retrospective, and the band's techincal accuracy in
their playing is second to none - obviously a very skilled crew (minus the drums)
delivering some great music. There are also the little piano segments between each song,
providing a defenite feeling of continuation... Overall, this is truly great stuff - prog
rock to the extreme!! |
