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This fourth Tiles album comes
five years after their last achievement “Presents Of Mind”. And they
changed quite a lot since that period. They started of as a more AOR
oriented band. “Presents Of Mind” took them in the soft progmetal
direction and the new album sounds a lot heavier but can still be
catalogued as progmetal.
The album was mixed by Terry Brown (Rush, IQ, Fates Warning) and the
artwork was designed by Hugh Syme (Arena, Megadeth, Rush), who also
plays some keyboards on “Slippers In The Snow”.
It takes a lot of courage to open your album with the longest, most
complex and most difficult track or should I rather consider it a
bad move? It’s not easy to digest this first track when you hear
this CD for the first time. But if you keep on listening to it, it
grows into a great epic. As often, persistence pays off.
“Window Dressing” has 4 different
parts. It opens with a heavy riff, changes into a quiet electric
melodic piece with a complex rhythm, goes back to a heavier vocal
part and ends with an acoustic quiet passage. Well, in my opinion it
should have ended here, because it felt like the end, but they
preferred to return to the first part again. But that doesn’t change
the fact that this is a great epic 17 minutes progmetal track.
“Remember To Forget” or “All She
Knows” would have been better album openers. They are a lot easier
to get into. The first contains a very catchy guitar riff and the
other has a great vocal line. The line “eyes that sparkle” echoes
through your head for a long time.
Paul is a great vocalist. He sounds a bit like Geddy Lee in the
higher regions. The whole band often sounds a bit like Rush,
undoubtedly partly due to the mixing of Terry Brown.
“Capture The Flag” is a perfect example of this Rush sound, without
losing their own identity, they got after four albums.
“Tear-Water Tea”, an acoustic ballad with some brilliant violin
playing, is a good recipe for a special drink. Beautiful vocals.
As on their previous album, they present some short instrumentals:
“Stop Gap”, a chaotic jazzy track, “Unicornicopia”, a classical
oriented piano and violin piece (although it’s constantly disturbed
by strange noises) and “A.02” a short acoustic guitar piece. These
tracks add up to the already omnipresent variation on the album.
“Spindrift” is the heaviest track. It doesn’t really fit in with the
rest of the tracks, although it contains the best (too short) guitar
solo of the album.
I like this album a lot but I prefer their previous album that
contained some softer progmetal. Of course, this opinion can change
in time, as I had 5 years to get into “Presents Of Mind”. The
special edition comes with a bonus live CD from the support-tour
they did in 1999 for Dream Theater. You can also buy special
editions of their first three albums.
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