Label: Nightmare Records 2012
Review by Kimmo Toivonen
Cloudscape might just be on the verge of something great. Their brand of progressive metal is almost as "non-proghead friendly" as the recent albums by the likes of Seventh Wonder or Threshold. The band knows how to write memorable melodies and some of the songs have really good choruses. And all the hardcore-progsters yell "Sell-out"... well, the album does have its' moments for those people too, the lengthy space-opus "Voyager 9" for example. I can't help but compare it to Seventh Wonder's song "The Great Escape" which has a somewhat similar space travelling theme, and I have to say that although the Cloudscape one is twenty minutes shorter, it feels longer...
If you want to check out one of the more accessible tracks, I'd suggest you listen to the brilliantly named "Simplicity...Huh..." Now that's a great song title for a prog metal band! Not to mention the fact that the hook is one of the better ones on the album.
While "New Era" doesn't completely convince me, I have no doubt that these guys could come up with the kind of an album that would do just that. They just need to find the perfect balance between the prog, the rock, the metal and the melodies.
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