The Progressive Metal Thread
Amorphis - Under the Red Cloud
Genres: Prog Metal, Melo-Death Metal, Prog Death Metal
I'm not planning on starting a Metal Academy hall on this, but there's just enough scattered throughout this album for me to call it a death metal album. But much of it builds itself on softer vocals, much like Ulver did with black metal, but lacking reverb. While many of the same elements are shared across the ten songs, including the random shifting between prog and melo-death, and occasional folsky elements, there are certain elements that make it hard to pick favorites among the batch, such as the occasional Arabic touches in Enemy at the Gates and Death of a King (and milder levels of it in White Night), as well as the Celtic metal sound of Tree of Ages. As well, there's a level of melody hear that I have to say utterly astounded me as a prog metal fan. While it maintains strong accessibility, it carefully molds all of the essential Amorphis elements together into, as one reviewer here put it, alchemically (I'm using this fake word and no one's stopping me). As an FMA fan, I have to say that the melody here reaches Philosopher's Stone levels of purity. Still, it's impossible not to notice a formula here that makes things a little predictable at the end, but they certainly nailed rocking the formula. I may have to re-evaluate Elegy, but this is currently my favorite Amorphis album (and maybe my favorite Amorphis album cover).98
I quite like everything I've heard from Amorphis but haven't really kept track of them since they dropped the death metal component of their sound in the late 1990's. I did check out "Under the Red Cloud" when it was a Metal Academy feature release though & it wasn't a bad listen. I'd still take the more deathly "The Karelian Isthmus" over it but I have to admit that I slightly prefer "Under the Red Cloud" to "Tales From the Thousand Lakes" & the "Black Winter Day" E.P. these days.
I quite like everything I've heard from Amorphis but haven't really kept track of them since they dropped the death metal component of their sound in the late 1990's. I did check out "Under the Red Cloud" when it was a Metal Academy feature release though & it wasn't a bad listen. I'd still take the more deathly "The Karelian Isthmus" over it but I have to admit that I slightly prefer "Under the Red Cloud" to "Tales From the Thousand Lakes" & the "Black Winter Day" E.P. these days.
I've always liked Tales from the Thousand Lakes, having a strong sense of melody and genre-playfulness, but it seemed less fleshed out than some later releases, and not as well produced, so I never gave it above an 85.
Dream Theater - "Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence" (2002)
It's kinda strange that I hadn't given Dream Theater's sixth full-length studio album (a double album in fact) a run before now when you consider how highly I regarded Boston's progressive metal masters during the late 1990's but that's the way that things have fallen so I decided to fill that gap over the last few days. "Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence" is generally considered to be a solid release that fails to reach the lofty heights that Dream Theater had previously scaled yet does nothing to take anything away from their legacy either & I've found myself agreeing with that sentiment this week. These two records rarely see the quality dipping below an acceptable level with only the cheesy symphonic piece "i. Overture" failing to offer me any enjoyment. I will suggest that the tracklisting is fairly top heavy though as most of the gold can be found on the first disk with the lengthy title track being more mildly enjoyable than it is essential. "The Great Debate" is an absolute masterclass in progressive metal while the more stripped back balladry that takes place early on is also very impressive. Guitarist John Petrucci (my favourite guitarist ever) is once again the standout performer with his solos invariably seeing me picking my jaw up off the floor. In terms of the overall package, I think 2003's "Train of Thought" is of a similar standard to this release but neither come close to matching earlier classics like "When Dream and Day Unite", "Images & Words" or "Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes From a Memory". They do compare well with 1994's "Awake" though & I'd take any of those three over 2005's "Octavarium" which saw the band taking a further step down in my opinion.
For fans of Symphony X, Rush & Liquid Tension Experiment.
4/5