Rating: 3/10
Label: Deadmedia 2011
Review by: Urban "Wally" Wallstrom
Torman Maxt's "The Problem of Pain Part 2" is a very ambitious conceptual album based on the Old Testaments Book of Job. It's supposed to be the old book of "Progressive rock and metal" too, the actual music is unfortunately not quite as spiritual and uplifting as the main story. Well, uplifting? Job, not exactly all praise and happy happy joy joy forever after (even though that's the main idea, yeah?). Poor Job goes through every bit of plea and complaint and words such as these: "they sit in judgement of my life, they scoff and they blame me, righteous friends like these feel like enemies", hits ya' right between the eyes.
Hmmm, yes, The U.S. Messaro Brothers [Tony - vocals/guitar, Dominic - bass, Vincent - drums] are trying to melt together their melodies into some kind of "christian" version of early Rush and Pavlov's Dog. Brother Tony is extremely important for the overall sound of Torman Maxt as he's the main songwriter as well as the producer. Perhaps too important at times as the melodies are blury and samey while the production leave much to ask for... and about for that matter. The drums are close to tin-cans and the bass guitar is way way back in the mix. The end result is a folk-rock-prog fusion which unfortunately doesn't always work. To sum it up in the lyrics of The Problem of Pain, "when God spoke Job was silenced", the music however continued and the band played on... 'sigh'. Ambitious but not quite as successful.
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