If the title of this album sounds like some grandiose prog album from the 1970s, then the accompanying publicity suggests that this isn’t so far out. Nods are given to bands like Dream Theater, Threshold, Rush, Tesseract, Haken and Vola so all roads lead to something between rock and a prog place. This is Sky Empire’s second album release.

“Prolegomenon: The Encomium of Creation” as an opening track title suggests that Sky Empire are not a band for understatement. Oh, and it lasts 14 minutes. Sure enough, it’s full of bombast, flamboyance and grandiosity. A familiar progressive metal guitar combines with keyboards and orchestral sounds. It’s fluid and exciting in its progression – I give it credit for that. This piece would make ideal film score music, affirmed by a section about 7 minutes in, and affirming that Sky Empire is the right name for this band. Prog finery featuring the keyboards and the lofty guitar style serves as dessert. Eventually it comes to a pompous end. We move to “On The Shores of Hallowed Heaven”. After the instrumental opener we have the vocals of Jeff Scott Soto (JSS), known for his work with Ingwie J.Malmsteen, Talisman and Journey. In contrast to “Prolegomenon” this is acoustic and presents prog rock from a softer angle, not only by virtue of the instrumental style but the harmonies and the orchestral aura. We have located prog emotion. Ending urgently, it leads to the classic prog rock of “The Emissary”. The vocals remind me a bit of David Coverdale. Ultimately this is prog rock with bells and knobs on. Occasionally it plunges into darkness, but this is like an exploration through colourful guitar lines and developing moods.

“Into My Father’s Eyes” launches into another melodic rock riff. JSS vocalises the tale with great expression. The instrumental work is once again colourful and upbeat, with the merest hint of menace from the bass. From this song it’s the ten minute “Wayfarer”. There’s plenty of soul searching and guitar finery here, but it did seem to take a long time to get to its climax, having journeyed through the fields of rock ostentatiousness, of which this album has plenty. A dazzling guitar solo starts off “The Last Days of Planet Fantasy”, an instrumental track. Most of it is devoted to an extended guitar passage. The latter part is a nondescript piano section. I couldn’t say how this section fits in with the song title, where the first part was sheer indulgence. The album ends with the sixteen minute “House of Cards”. A shuffling beat is the base for JSS’s carefully enunciated words which come from the prog textbook. After an extended guitar solo, the ante is upped and both music and vocal delivery reflect drama and tension. The song sails off, with the aid of the keyboard and guitar, into prog land. It’s dynamic and at the same time self-indulgent. An acoustic section heralds of the return of JSS to continue his introspective reflections: “how did we come so far, forgetting who we are”, he sings. He does this with great power and it’s a great credit to him and the musicians that they should engage us with such a lofty atmosphere.

It would be churlish of me to moan that this album is “too prog” because no-one claimed it would be anything else. To be fair, the pure prog is interspersed with rock and to a lesser extent metal. The album also has “classic rock” written all over it, bursting back and forth between this and a prog-driven soundscape. The structure of these seven substantial pieces is intelligent, and the songs largely have a flow about them while tending to be overtaken by the colourful instrumentals. “The Shifting Tectonic Plates of Power – Part One” is extravagant, pompous and occasionally emotive but not overly so. Until the very last section I didn’t have a great sense of feeling when listening to this album but I did appreciate the sharp musicianship and its technical merit.

(7/10 Andrew Doherty)

https://www.facebook.com/SkyEmpireMusic

https://vicisolumrecords.com/album/the-shifting-tectonic-plates-of-power-part-one