Sunday 1 June 2008

The Chronicles of Israfel, Starborn, Tome 1


Canada, 2007

I should probably start off by stating I dislike Dream Theater with a passion, and am immensely bored with cliché Ayreon-like concept albums that are used as redeeming features for crap music way too often. Enter The Chronicles of Israfel, a band compared to DT and with a sci-fi concept album. The cynic in me wouldn't give this a chance under normal circumstances, but since it was recommended on our last.fm group I decided to give it a shot... and damn, was I surprised.

While not perfect, this is way too enjoyable to pass on. I understand why they get compared to Dream Theater, since DT do sound like this... 10 seconds at a time. However TCoI never drown their songs in unnecessarily complex technical passages, and never stray away from the focus of the song: melody. The result is far edgier, where simplicity actually emphasizes their musicianship rather than take from it.

Thanks are due to Nowitzki15002 for recommending this.


Playlist:

01 - Starborn, Part I: Empire of Light
02 - Starborn, Part II: Citizen
03 - Starborn, Part III: On a Forever Road
04 - Burning Day
05 - The Equinigma
06 - Laudanum
07 - Nation
08 - Born Fighting
09 - Kill Division
10 - New Mood Therapy for a Medicated Babylon
11 - Eugenics
12 - Home to Oblivion
13 - Lacrima Christi

rapidshare.
zShare.

4 comments:

J said...

Your zShare link is wrong! It actually points a a link to edit your post, oddly enough...

closure said...

thanks for pointing that out. duly corrected.

Xeno said...

I miss Pulse ultra. Love this band

LiarOfAngmar said...

Way easier than DT of course .. but this is some greatly entertaining music! Maybe you'd dig CHIMP SPANNER too .. he's more technical and didn't use any lyrics on his albums though.
cheers*