Published on May 7, 1999
It’s a funny thing, but everyone who listens to music as more
than just background noise while stuck in traffic ends up thinking
that some artist or group sounds like some other artist or group.
If it’s happened to you, then you know what I’m talking about. If
it hasn’t happened to you, don’t worry… it’ll catch up.
So I shouldn’t have been surprised when I started listening to
Steel Prophet’s latest release
Dark Hallucinations; halfway through I found myself asking,
“Did I pop in a Queensryche CD by mistake?”
Of course, Steel Prophet is a progressive metal band who have
their own unique sound and song structure… but damned if they
don’t sound like Queensryche from time to time. While there is some
genuinely entertaining music on this album, there are other times
where the energy lags a bit.
Led by vocalist Rick Mythiasin and guitarist/founding member
Steve Kachinsky Blackmoor, Steel Prophet combines elements of
metal, thrash and progressive rock into its sound. But if you read
the song titles (at least on my advance copy), there seems to be a
story line tying some of the album’s nine tracks together. Fine and
dandy – but the songs jump from chapter one to chapter five, then
back to chapter two! The hell with trying to decipher any story
line.
Musically, Steel Prophet do have many things going for them –
namely, the element of surprise. You never can be sure when the
band is going to jump from a progressive riff into a double-bass
pumping speed metal section. Some might find this to be a tad
annoying; I, however, found it interesting that they would shift
musical gears like this.
Some of the tracks, like “New Life” and “We Are Not Alone,”
stand out as being some of the band’s best work on
Dark Hallucinations. But on other tracks, it’s sometimes
hard to keep one’s head focused on the music. It’s almost as if the
music on tracks like “Strange Encounter” and “Betrayal” try to take
you out of the game – and that, I don’t think, was Steel Prophet’s
intention.
The only other thing I’d call Steel Prophet to task for is the
abrupt ending to the album, on “Spectres”. It’s almost as if the
song had more life left in it, but it comes to a screeching halt.
Why not let the song end on its own terms?
Still,
Dark Hallucinations is an album that should appeal to many
fans of different genres of music. It is the kind of album that
could get a hardcore headbanger interested in progressive rock,
while it could open the eyes of other listeners to the world of
metal. Just be ready to give this disk anywhere from two to four
listens before you really start getting into it.