2015 has seen some fantastic Progressive Metal albums come out. With offerings from Jorn Lande, Anthropia, Iris Divine, Rendezvous Point, Symphony X and Queensrÿche all offering out new material, you could easily fill up a good portion of the end of year album list with progressive metal! Hoping to add to that list and make it harder for me to start whittling down the releases to make a viable shortlist which can in turn make a top 10 of the year, Aussie four piece unleash Her Halo, their fifth full length release since their formation in 1994. Let’s see if this is worth throwing another shrimp on the barbie for.
From the off, this album spells epic progressive metal. A quick glance at the track lengths shows the shortest of the eight tracks clocking in at just under five minutes and the longest one weighs in at almost thirteen minutes, which also happens to be the Album opener “An Ordinary Dream (Enla Momento)”. It starts off well, bright sounding clean guitars and piano make for an easy listening intro until the distortion kicks in, bringing in the speed and heaviness in the vein of recent Dream Theater and Symphony X. With a rich bass sound, controlled and technically spot on guitars, dynamic clean vocal delivery and the clever use of synths which makes for a huge atmosphere, the song gets off to a flier but like all long songs, it does have a few drawbacks. The most common issue for long songs is for them to struggle holding attention – often they shift styles and feels throughout and the transitions in these shifts have to be spot on or it loses the flow and feels too disjointed. Sadly, as technically sound as Teramaze are, some of the transitions don’t come off as slick as you’d hope so it does feel a little disjointed. Musically it is good, but for an epic album opener, it’s not as good as one would hope.
Thankfully, from track two to the very last one, things are different. “To Love, A Tyrant” has a real heavy metal edge to it and everything just flows right on this one. With a big sounding chorus with a decent underlying groove to it, cutting riffs and dynamic lead guitar and synth work, it really captures the attention with how expressive and powerful it sounds. Title track “Her Halo” brings in the shifting time signature sections along with its dramatic build up progressions. Vocally, it’s an incredible delivery and the clean musical delivery in the verse makes for the distorted choruses to seem louder and more impactful, exactly what you’d want from a title track.
“Out of Subconscious” hits hard from the off. With heavy chunky sounding riffs coupled with soaring backing synths, it gets the attention and keeps it throughout. With the switching from distortion to cleans for the verses and choruses, it plays well, allowing the bass and drums to come through more and the miniature solo’s from the guitar which punctuate the transitions between sections are fantastic. Full of complex twisting runs and technical excellence, this is a very modern prog metal track. “For the Innocent” follows on with more polyrhythmic complexity and big atmospheric synths but it’s the verse which really shines out on this song. With it being predominantly bass and vocal, you can hear the rich low end groove which just hooks you right in and come the instrumental moment, there is no shortage of technical wizardry with some virtuoso solo performances and furious low end heavy riffs.
“Trapeze” is the token progressive metal instrumental track which allows the band to really showboat with intricate arrangements, guitar and bass twisting run tradeoffs and synth solo’s which comes over the trademark progressive metal delivery of a steady pace and big sound, whilst “Broken” is the ballad of the album. It’s soft and passionate vocals along with the nice sounding acoustic guitar start it off well, but in the second verse where the synths pick up and a lightly distorted guitar joins in, it allows for a wider range of sounds to be hit and a more expressive vocal delivery. The chorus sounds huge, just what you’d expect in a track like this and the piano melody in between the technical and expressive guitar solo’s really hits the spot.
Closing track, “Delusions of Grandeur” is the ten minute epic album closer and much like the rest of this album, there is a lot riding on the way the build up works. With clever use of synths and cleans to punctuate the distorted fills and transitions, it is a very dynamic track and a lot better than the other epic which opened the album. Flowing better, the track shifts from heavy to melodic to technical with minimal fuss, increasing the urgency at times with complicated twisting riffs and furious lead guitar work and the choruses are delivered with the right impact, keeping the attention throughout as the last notes of the outro solo fade.
In all, “Her Halo” is another solid progressive metal release for 2015. Whilst its opening track lets it down, the other seven do not disappoint in the slightest. Perhaps it was placed wrong and could have served better before or after the instrumental track later in the album or perhaps it could have been scrapped all together? All I know is that this album is good quality progressive metal and that opening epic was the only thing stopping it from hitting the real high scores.
(8.5/10 Fraggle)
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