Pyramaze
Melancholy Beast

Pyramaze again you might think, and you’d be correct as this is the second time in 2017 we review Pyramaze. To me it is a bit of Nostalgia as well as I reviewed this album back in 2004 when it was originally released and I wasn’t very impressed then. But that was in 2004, many years has passed since then and some of us are older, some are wiser and Pyramaze have a new vocalist and many of the members are not left in the band since this album. Michael Kammeyer does some liner notes and there is a bonus track that was found on the Japanese issue of the album, and as it has been out of print for a while it also means that it will be available again.

Power progressive metal is probably the way to describe this, namedropping bands like Anubis Gate, Eldritch, Pagan’s Mind and perhaps even Dream Theater might help you understand how it sounds. Lance King did the vocals for this and the band’s second album and I think he pales I comparison with the band’s current singer Terje Harøy who sounds great. And while comparing with contemporary Pyramaze I think we can conclude that this sounds a lot less powerful and less well-produced than their more recent efforts. And the album is quite long as well and the variation isn’t really big enough to keep the listener interested for the duration.

I don’t think the years have really done much for this album, it hasn’t aged gracefully but neither has it aged very poorly. I thought it was rather bad when I first reviewed it over a decade ago, now I am less negative but far from impressed. I think that it is a decently made album but it is very uninteresting, and I wouldn’t have described it as a promising debut then and wouldn’t do it now even though I know how good they have become since this debut but there was nothing to indicate that. One could actually say that all the changes since this album was released were good changes and now Pyramaze is a rather fantastic band but they started out as a very uninteresting one.

So if you are looking for something by Pyramaze to add to your record collection it would be much wiser to get Contingent that was released earlier this year, that is a brilliant album while this one is a rather dull thing. Not even the cover is good so I cannot really call myself impressed. In their humble beginnings Pyramaze was a quite uninteresting band not really worthy of much attention – but they turned out okay in the end.

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