Structural Disorder
A Prelude to Insanity

Swedish quintet Structural Disorder makes their debut with the four track EP that is called A Prelude to Insanity, an EP with a band that has a clever name and title but not the best cover that I have ever seen. The EP is a conceptual one about a guy who logically becomes insane when expecting his first child and kills wife and child and then being in a mental institution and remembering events in fragments, something like that is the story and that is one thing that sounds really interesting I would say. A debut that is fascinating at least when reading the press information and all of that, just a pointer on that thing: a release date on the press information could be something to have in the future.

Progressive metal quintet they call themselves and why not? I see no reason why not. It is a progressive EP where the music is quite dominated by the keyboards but with all the regular elements of progressive metal and a quite varied EP stylistically. The sound is very good and the production can be described to be a very competent such, much more mature than you’d might expect from a debuting band. It feels like a quality product if I look at the soundscape and production and this product goes on for almost 23 minutes through the four tracks.

This EP is a bit difficult to really pinpoint, it is stylistically varied and there is not real connection between the songs which makes me loose the story all the time. But lets go quickly through the tracks for a second, the opening track has excellent keyboards but as many bands it sort of dies when the singer begins and the verse opening of this song are quite poor while the song in itself is rather good despite this. The second track is a good calm track with nice feel to it but the lyrics are amongst the most boring lyrics I have ever heard and they are so boring that it makes this song poor despite it being musically quite good. The third track is simply the best track on the EP, it is dynamic, powerful and great. The ending track is alright but it is quite forgetful so it is a bit of a roller-coaster ride of an EP.

I think this EP has some good points but at the same time some not so good points, the main problem is that the story does not work as the songs does not feel connected by some joining soundscapes. I can understand the fragmentation in the songs due to them being part of a psychotic man’s memories that he remembers in fragments but there should still be some indication that it is the same guy and he is not schizophrenic so there really should be some red line musically that goes through the album and that is not the case in this EP which sort of takes away a lot from the whole picture.

I think though that you can say that this is a talented quintet, their keys are great, vocals are really good at times and there are some great points in the music as well but as a whole it just does not really add up for me so I see this as a promising band for the future who does not quite manage to tie together music and concept on this their debut EP. But the third tracks is really something to keep.