Psychotic Waltz - A Social Grace (1990)^{Release ID: 2644}

How I’ve managed to overlook San Diego progressive metallers Psychotic Waltz up until now is anyone’s guess because their 1990 debut album is a very impressive effort to say the least. “A Social Grace” harnesses outstanding musicianship & some highly complex arrangements to create over an hour of seriously classy metal music that lacks nothing in the heaviness department either. Fans of 1980’s Fates Warning should immediately get onboard this ship as there are close similarities however I’d suggest that Psychotic Waltz are a touch heavier with their sound further indulging in the chunkier end of the US power metal scene more consistently.

Front man Buddy Lackey takes a theatrical & operatic approach that often sounds quite a bit like Iron Maiden/Samson legend Bruce Dickinson. He does a pretty reasonable job at navigating Psychotic Waltz’s rhythmic technicalities & ensures that none of the thirteen tracks included could be considered as weak or filler. There’s a noticeable lack of memorable vocal hooks though & it’s this absence that sees the appeal of “A Social Grace’ being capped at around that four-star mark. The instrumentation is often nothing short of dazzling but I can’t say that I can remember much of the song-writing afterwards & that can be the difference between good & great when it comes to progressive music a lot of the time as it clearly is here.

Still… you’ll do well to find a more capable & professional example of early progressive metal than this one. It’s right up there with the best material that had been released to the time in my opinion & I’d probably take it over Fates Warning’s more well known classics like “The Spectre Within” or “Awaken The Guardian” to be honest.

Psychotic Waltz’ debut album A Social Grace is a high-quality Prog Metal affair with nice splashes of Power Metal and Heavy Metal, and an overlying fantasy/philosophical nature to it. The technique and songwriting are above average, with each musician having a good amount of precision and skill to show off. There are also a decent amount of simpler, beautiful segments and speedy aggressive parts that break things up nicely.

As far as Prog Metal goes, it’s pretty generic, which is a fair bet for anything this old, but everything is done well and there are no weak tracks barring the interlude. Nothing groundbreaking, no masterpiece, but a very fine cut of metal indeed.