Meridian
Margin of Error

Marigin for error, isn’t that something for cowards? Or the more cautious who calculate with an error margin, these guys who broke the surface with a submarine on their earlier album that was a rather explosive torpedo in the face of the listener. This time they go for the more calculated, for calculations perhaps with equations and craftsmanship rather than artistry in the creative process. That has led to eleven new tracks where we find devils in us all and screams for me with lots in between. And while they do have some glorious highlights I am not so sure that the quintet is even close to what they did last time around.

Musically it is similar wit hardrock but perhaps mostly power metallish music with some progressive additions. Pretty safe routes through most songs that are helped by excellent vocalist contributions, and from a creative standpoint I think the band has taken many steps backwards. And isn’t the same true for the sound? I think the sound was better last time. Perhaps using a big margin of error has left them not taking any musical risks and that leads to a stylewise pretty unexciting album, not that they were very exciting on the previous album but at least that had a lot more character than this one has. And I would also surmise that it is an album that is too long; I tend to loose interest after a while.

In its best moments this is an excellent album, the opening track is great and Second Best is a quite wonderful track where the band shows what they do really well, it is too bad that they show it very rarely this time. Most of the tracks on this album gives a fairly tired impression, well crafted but without character. This album should have needed more tracks that shows what the band are capable of we can see two prime examples when listening through this album but there are too many examples of the indifferent kind as well. I would say that it is almost like the band was focusing on making music according to a format rather than actually coming up with songs no matter where it took them.

Fans of the previous Meridian albums will find this one most appealing but I am not sure that the album is interesting enough to really take off. It seems as though they broke the surface somewhere in the arctic and then they got stuck in the ice and never really got going again, it seemed as they would at a couple of occasions but in the end I cannot really say that Margin of Error show what the band are capable off. A pretty ordinary album from Meridian.

HHHHHHH