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This album was soon moved to the top of the review pile after reading through the biography. A UK based band with the genre tag 'Prog-fusion metal' and 'Staggering musicianship'. Immediately thoughts turned to bands like Meshuggah, Candiria and the like, so I had to get this into my CD player quickly.
'Reversal' starts things off in brilliant film-score style with light wind instrumentation, spiralling ambience and tense holding chords, before then really kicking in with off-kilter jerking rhythms, big guitars and a strange style vocal. Think towards Dream Theater, Conception, Fredrik Thordendal Special Defects (moreso than Meshuggah), and include hints of Candiria as well for the grooves and clever drum touches, and even vocal delivery is reminiscent in places. The Dream Theater-esque croons also feature quite highly in the make up of LS's sound, and usually that would put me off, but everything is performed to such a high standard, that I can get passed that and listen to it for the musicianship.
Definitely this is something that is going to have to be taken in over the course of rather a lot of listens, as, of course, there is so much going on. There is so much clever, intricate work put in on the drums for starters, the samples are plentiful and well used, and there are plenty of quality chord progressions and song direction changes. 'Division Man' comes over as a highlight, musically, with it's warping swagger throughout. Vocally though I'm not keen, but everything else is highly impressive in my ears. 'Marketing' is another with some brilliant music, definitely more toward early Meshuggah. Plenty of Allan Holdsworth and Tribal Tech style brilliance features in the four part closer 'From space to time', which is sparcer on the vocal front and is definitely a highlight.
Some will appreciate the vocals, but it does less than nothing for me in the whole scheme of things, whereas the music is brilliantly pieced together and, especially in the shape of the final epic, Linear Sphere are streets ahead of 99% of bands on this planet!
Reviewer: Paul