My Soliloquy
The Interpreter

My Soliloquy gives us seven songs that are pretty OK but lacks stronger impressions. It's some sort of thrashy heavy metal with progressive direction that last for 46 minutes and has a pretty mediocre vocalist. 46 minutes in seven songs, that means long songs and that's unfortunantely the case with this album - the shortest song is a bit over five minutes but the most ends somewhere above seven minutes. Despite this, that they've reached the time of 46 minutes - which is enough in itself - the band decides to do one more song before they end the album. And in my opinion, that's the best decision they've done on 'The Interpreter'.

The concluding song of 'The Interpreter' is called Star and is a ballad that's just perfect to close the album. It's a bit like when these big Hollywood films puts a slow, beautiful song to run the credits with and I think this last song really saves the entire album. It's not that the first seven songs are bad in any way, they're just not anything special. They use lots of keyboards, plenty of atmosphere and pretty heavy guitars. They have a vocalist that sounds very Italian in his singing style, but Pete Morten and friends comes from Great Britain and Morten is also a part of Threshold all though he only does the guitars there, not the vocal-combo he does here (actually he plays everything but the drums on the album). I don't really like Mortens voice, it's not terrible but clearly the weakest link here and his voice is very high pitched and pretty nasal - it reminds me a bit of Rob Moratti whom we've saw in Saga a couple of years ago but not quite as sharp.

There are a couple of fast tracks on 'The Interpreter' all though most of the songs are pretty slow. Most of the album is played in a slower mid-tempo and the songs seems to put focus on atmospheres and mood instead of power or playfulness. And I'm not too attracted by the way they've done this. When Star finally comes at the end I think this track really saves the entire album from being forgotten as soon as it's run out of songs. Now the album has something interesting there at the very end and the funny thing is that I have a "bonus child" or whatever we should call her that is called Star, which is something that doesn't harm the song at all.

Overall, though, I don't think this album is too interesting. The songs are too long and also too dull for their own good. It seems like the band has tried to build around these atmospheres and moods I mentioned earlier and tried to make some sort of crescendo with these in the end of the songs. The problem is that the songs are way too long to make such a thing and therefore the album tends to be mostly transportation and waiting for things to come and it doesn't happen very much during these. And when something happens it's not particularly interesting. There are a few exceptions but most of the album is not exceptions. Otherwise it's nothing wrong with the production side and I also think the instrumental performance is pretty throughout the album. The problem is that the songs just aren't that interesting.

I like Star, and I also think there are a couple of other tracks on the album that are decent, but 'The Interpreter' would have made more sense to me had they sharpened their knifes and cut some more out of the album.

 

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