RockRoast

Tyranny (1998)
Shadow Gallery

Tyranny is one of my favorite concept albums. It tells the story of a weapons designer who comes to his senses and realizes he’s building bombs that will kill thousands of innocent people. He becomes crippled by disillusionment until he meets a similar soul on the internet who helps him make sense of all the corruption. He falls in love with her and the end of the album sees them still determined to make a positive change in the world, even as they flee evil government agents.

It may sound cheesy in writing, but the music makes it work with minimal lameness. After a brief instrumental introduction, “War For Sale” kicks the album off with an energetic, guitar-driven anthem. The climactic eight-minute “New World Order” boasts a dueling vocal between Shadow Gallery’s Mike Baker and Royal Hunt’s D.C. Cooper. The final track, “Christmas Day,” imparts inspiring words of hope over a beautiful piano melody. Most importantly, Tyranny showcases Shadow Gallery’s characteristic melodies. Bassist Carl Cadden-James is responsible for most of the vocal lines on this record, and Tyranny stands as a shining example of his talent for writing strikingly unique and memorably emotional melodies. All other elements of Shadow Gallery’s sound are present, accounted for, and at their finest.

Shadow Gallery’s work sounds derivative at times and it could be easy to label them as a generic prog metal ripoff band. But Tyranny (as well as its sequel, 2005’s Room V) sets the band apart as legitimate contributors to the genre. I look forward to the third installment of the storyline, hopefully due out in the next year or two.

Well, it’s mid-February. Which means it’s still cold and gloomy outside, at least in this part of the world. Which may be why I’ve been listening to so much death metal lately.

But anyway. Speaking of death metal and mid-February, there may be a bit of news that could cheer up anyone suffering from winter blues. Progressive/melodic death metal band Into Eternity may soon be checking into a studio to begin recording their next album. Mid-February was the estimated starting date for the recording process, according to a January 23rd post by guitarist Tim Roth on Into Eternity’s official website.

I’m not familiar with Into Eternity’s catalog in depth, but I did pick up their last effort, “The Scattering of Ashes,” a few months back. I can’t say I was too impressed. I’m a bit picky about death growls, and I didn’t consider Into Eternity’s to have been tastefully done. Not to mention the music was pretty ridiculous, all super-fast playing with clumsy time signature changes and overcaffeinated blast beats. However, when they mellowed out, sang cleanly, and held back a little on the theatrics, they really shined. And that at least showed some promise for the future.

But not enough for me. I wasn’t interested in buying any more music from these guys. But then I happened to read on their website (the November 5th news post) that they were working on a concept album. I’m a big sucker for a concept album, so all of a sudden, I’m interested in these guys again. With a little luck, they’ll create a cool concept to accompany their work, hopefully shying away a bit from the emo-ness of their lyrics on “The Scattering of Ashes.” And if the music matures a bit too, I might actually thoroughly enjoy this next one.

That’s not to say that they couldn’t totally screw it up, though. Honestly, I’m not expecting much, but I’m attempting to keep a postive perspective to combat the gloomy weather.