A concept album seems to be something of a coming of age ritual with prog-related bands. Sure, it's fun coming up with an elaborate story, throwing in hammy voiceovers and sprinkling some pomp over the whole thing, but you do need some l33t skills to pull it off. A lot of bands have enough trouble filling an album with interesting songs, much less managing to do it while spinning an overarcing yarn.

You could play it like Operation: Mindcrime and just stuff some kickass songs in there, all loosely threaded together by a central story, but Seventh Wonder seem to be sticking a bit closer to the blueprint Dream Theater set down with Metropolis pt.2, including the Night Shyamalan-esque twist at the end. As far as I can tell, here's the story - it starts with a car crash (reasons unknown), and then we later hear some dialog from the survivor, visiting the driver, her husband, at the hospital, where he's apparently been a vegetable for quite a while now (violins play). 

So then the doctors are talking to her about getting some bone marrow transplant from their kid (or grandkid, I'm not sure) to use in an 'experimental treatment' that could save his life. They carry out the procedure, but even after, the guy is still playing Rip Van Winkle. So, after the necessary wailing, they pull the plug on the dude. Then a flashback reveals that - aha! - the wench had cheated on him, and she confessed that the kid wasn't his while they were driving somewhere one rainy night (actually, I don't know if it was night, I'm just assuming) and that's what caused the guy to crash in the first place. Obviously, the bone marrow transplant wouldn't work, since the kid wasn't even his own blood. Talk about adding injury to insult! I could be off in my reasoning here, but I think it's a fairly sound theory. Sorry for spoiling the surprise and all that.

It's always dicey doing fancy concepts like this in something other than your first language. I'm assuming English isn't theirs, since they're a bunch of Svedes. The lyrics here aren't outright bad in any grammatical sense, just way too ham-handed and blunt to evoke anything other than amusement. And the voice acting is so amateurish, you can practically see them holding the lines in front of them. It's not like I was expecting Faust, but it still chafes.

Ah, lyrics aren't usually my focus while listening to music, it's just that these are so overbearing that I couldn't completely ignore them. Anyway, on to the music. Their previous efforts had some high points. For one thing, they had a knack for some big catchy choruses, greatly aided by Tommy Karevik prodigous pipes. They were also pretty tight, but when you're a rock band from Sweden, people sort of take that for granted.

On that front, things have been kicked up a notch. Listen to the bridge and chorus on Welcome to Mercy Falls or the interlude towards the end of Unbreakable, and it's immediately infectious, Karevik's voice soaring through some catchy melodies and harmonies. It's the other things that start bogging it down. The band have this fascination with derailing grooves with all manner of tightly-packed technical bursts, and it's about as welcome as a spike strip on an eight-lane highway. What's the need for the syncopation? I can understand why bands like Blotted Science and Spiral Architect do it - it's a vital part of their whole sound. But here you've got sweet melodies and nice big pop choruses and you're just jamming the flow with the technical monkey on your back.

I don't think I'm being unfair to the band just because of my disenchantment with that sound in general. It's just really not a format that clicks as well as it ought. These guys could be doing something like AoR with a metal edge (that'd sound something like Jorn, I'd think) and doing a damn good job of it. Instead, we have to settle for an album that's got some really cool parts but has distracting tomfoolery in the middle (all of which adds to over 70 minutes playtime!). Drop the technical shenanigans, get a fatter guitar tone, have less keyboard leads and then let's see. That's how their compatriots Mind's Eye did it, and that album was a cracker. Hmm...now my review's become a story of its own. I should make an album.

 

 

Label: Lion Music 

Year of release: 2008