Label: Magna Carta

Tracks:

1. "The Dance of Fools" (7:35)
2. "Darktown" (9:12)
3. "Mystified" (7:09)
4. "Questions at Hand" (6:54)
5. "The Final Hour" (5:06)
6. "Say Goodbye to the Morning" (6:50)
7. "The Queen of the City of Ice" (17:10)

Musicians:

• Carl Cadden-James - bass, vocals, flute
• Brendt Allman - guitars, vocals
• Chris Ingles - piano, synthesizer
• Gary Wehrkamp - guitar, piano, synthesizer, vocals

Guest musicians:

• Joe Nevolo - drums
• Mike Baker - lead vocals

I am not a great fan of progressive metal, but I really like this album, maybe because to the fact that it's not so metallic, but more progressive.

This Shadow Gallery's debut album, as I think, it appeared a bit before Dream Theater's "Images and Words", so we are face to face to one of the pioneers bands of prog-metal, although here there is neither too many metallic guitars, nor so much accelerated rhytms, this it is a prog-metal album in essence, more progressive -more precisely neo-progressive- than metallic, but prog-metal. We can say that the influences come basically from Rush, the neo-progressive bands like Marillion, the symphonic epic-baroque metal Yngwie Malmsteen kind, and the American AOR-prog Kansas kind, with a singer more in the vein of L.A. hard rock bands as Guns'n'Roses or Motley Crue.

Some tracks are really excellent as "Darktown", a very ameri-prog track; the enigmatic ballad "Mystified"; the accelerated, metallic and progressive "Questions at Hand"; and, certainly, the wonderful progressive suite of 17 minutes, "The Queen of the City of Ice", with this delicious enigmatic, a bit Gothic air.

I think this is a perfect album to access to the prog-metal, for those who still have not managed to identify with no band of this style. Great album.

Rating: 8/10

Ferran Lizana