Friday, December 11, 2015

SIMULACRUM: "Sky Divided"

Rating: RRRr
Label: Inverse Records
Review by Martien Koolen

 The second album of the Finnish prog metal band Simulacrum is again a must for lovers of music that blends speed metal with neo-prog and classic power metal with melodic rock. Sky Divided is a kind of concept album dealing with science fiction inspired by classic sf books/movies, like War Of The Worlds, Fahrenheit 451 and Mad Max.

Musical highlights on this album are the two longest tracks being The Abomination and A New Beginning. The latter clocks 14 minutes and is a perfect example of the complex music of this band: great musicianship all around with influences from notorious bands like Symphony X or Fear Factory. The Abomination is my favourite as it features a superb instrumental passage with excellent guitar and keyboardsolos. Timelapse is the instrumental opener and this one almost sounds like a movie sound track, mainly due to the great orchestration in that song. Broken, a very dark song, has a surprise in store as it actually features a mean saxophone solo, giving that track an almost jazzy feeling. Sky Divided features endless guitar hooks and riffs and here the drumming is very dominant and powerful.

In fact I would say that there is not a bad song to be found on Sky Divided and if you like fast melodic neo prog metal and bands like Symphony X, Fear Factory, Yes and/or TesseracT then this album will certainly please you. Play at maximum volume or listen to the album thorugh your headphones and you will be amazed. Highly recommended for fans of Scandinavian power metal!

www.simulacrum.fi

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