Review by MartinDavey87 for Time Requiem - Unleashed in Japan (2003)

Let’s just be honest here, does anyone actually go out of their way to listen to this album? The thing is, it’s not bad, it’s just, well… weird. ‘Time Requiem’, a progressive metal band specializing in lightning-fast flurries of notes in a neoclassical vein, is the product of keyboard mastermind Richard Andersson. They’d only released one studio album prior to this, so like… why produce a live album so early in their career?

It just seems unusual. I don’t know a lot about the band, but I would take a guess that, like other, similar groups, they probably don’t gig very often, if ever. And with a limited choice of songs, it just doesn’t really offer much for the listener to sink their teeth into.

For what it’s worth though, the performances are fantastic. Each member of the band plays with machine-like precision. The sound is very good, and the crowd seem quite receptive to the band, though my guess is that this isn’t typically a Time Requiem audience.

It could also just be that I’ve always preferred studio albums to their live counterparts. But overall, this isn’t a bad release, but I doubt I’ll ever listen to it again. I’ll just stick to the bands studio output instead.