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8.5/10 Brandon
8.5/10 Avi
SOUL SECRET - Flowing Portraits - CD - Progrock Records - 2008
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review by: Brandon Strader
Another solid debut on Progrock Records, Soul Secret bring a heavier progressive metal sound than the label's norm, while still displaying the synth elements and pleasant key changes that seem like a characteristic point of interest of these bands. Despite being progressive metal, Flowing Portraits is very easy to listen to.
There are so many great elements to this album. In a way, it sounds like the alternate sound Dream Theater would have had if they ultimately would have decided to keep a Rush-style vocalist. Mark Basile's higher range vocals are similar to those from The Mars Volta. Apart from Dream Theater, you can also sense a lot of power metal influence in the music, mostly in the compositional choices, yet the songwriting isn't as fast or stuffed as your average power metal.
Their website lists a great list of influences: Dream Theater, Pain of Salvation, Pink Floyd, Vanden Plas, Liquid Tension Experiment, Symphony X, Spock's Beard, Tool, etc... You can definitely hear these influences in their music. There's a break on "Dance of the Waves" with piano and the bass taking the main focus above the drums that sounds totally inspired by Pain of Salvation. Soul Secret have taken these influences and have crafted and refined them in a way that would fit their own identity and forge their own sound. Apart from being creative, it also has great re-playability.
"Regrets" is a nice ballad, but the air sounds are freakishly loud. It also sounds like Basile lets out a breath onto the mic sometimes. It's a strange way to compress the vocals that takes you out of the experience of this otherwise beautiful song. "Tears of Kalliroe" is the epic piece that starts out with three minutes of orchestration before going into a laid-back jam with clean electric guitar and a saw lead synth. The song is a spectacle crafted in the fires of prog for those who dare experience it, and it ends the album with a dark, sour note.
In a world saturated by hordes of progressive metal bands, it is great to finally see a new band get it so right on the first try. Continuing from what they've unleashed with Flowing Portraits, Soul Secret are certainly going to make a name for themselves in the prog community. (8.5/10)
review by: Avi Shaked
Italian Soul Secret offers progressive metal that sounds a whole lot like its American contemporaries ("Learning to Lose," for example, is nearly the typical Dream Theater semi-ballad), but with a native Italian twist that gives the music original tint.
While there’s lots of heavy, even drilling, guitar work throughout the album, the keyboards are the primary sponsors of the music's symphonic nature, and these go hand in hand with Mark Basile’s melodramatic high vocals. Basile, by the way, is presented as a session vocalist, and this is a major threat on the band’s future, considering that this debut is an initiation not only for the band but also for its audience, and the latter can find itself baffled when setting the expectations for a followup.
The songwriting, for the most part, is commendable — with musical roles not only technically impressive (featuring well-executed unison lines and blazing fretboard runs) but also woven together seamlessly into the lushly orchestrated songs. The aforementioned melodramatic and symphonic characteristics correspond with (if not rely on) some ‘70s prog-rock bands that came out of Italy (e.g. PFM) and assimilated the country’s popular San Remo music into rock music. The dramatic delivery adds a breath of humanity into the driving compositions, with songs such as "Inner War" reminding us of the way Kansas mixed the richness of progressive music with the direct assault of rock in the ‘70s.
The ending piece, "Tears of Kalliroe," is an impressive sixteen-minute opus. It opens with a grandiose, classically inspired overture that would have not sounded out of place as a soundtrack to an historical epic film. The performance that follows is filled with conflicts, and as such introduces some rougher vocals, coarser guitars and menacing themes, adding even more power to one of 2008 most impressive debuts. (8.5/10)
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