The Progressive Souls Collective
Sonic Birth

How about The Progressive Souls Collective? A collection of progressive souls joined in the desire to make something forward thinking and exciting? It is a project by guitarist Florian Zepf, and he has managed to enlist some prominent names from the progressive genre for this debut album, or Sonic Birt, for The Progressive Souls Collective moniker. The title is fitting and the cover fits the title, it doesn’t look terrible and doesn’t look brilliant, a decent front for this album. An album that contains eleven tracks and over an hour of music, good value if the songs are good and the longevity is positive rather than negative as often is the case in music. So what about this album then?

Progressive metal is the genre, I think you could guesstimate that from the name and the name of the ones who has been participating in the recording of this album. It Is obvious that they take inspiration from Dream Theater and their peers, track nine sounds suspiciously like something by Leprous and the list can go on in that regard. It is an unpredictable album in a way, but everything is very familiar, it is like rearranging the furniture or something – it feels fresh enough but then you see that it isn’t really a new sensation at all. It is an album with good variation and depth, the vocalist is also a very good vocalist, it is a good production.

Sonic Birth is a great album, the songs are very strong and it is enjoyable to listen to. I have no major complaints, but I know that if they could shake the copying of their inspiration they will be capable of something very exciting. This may not be very exciting, but as it is really good it doesn’t really matter that much. They sell the playing time of an hour and change very well and never do I feel that the album is too long, the disappointment is that I am waiting for that magical hit songs that I feel should be there, but it isn’t. But other than that I am all ears, and I think you should be as well.

The highlights, or most memorable are the track You and Me Alone and Destiny Inc. those tracks are very memorable. And overall I think that this is an album worth checking out for anyone into the progressive style of metal, a style that has been quite static for a long time now – perhaps it is time to make it more progressive again. These are small thing though, as you cannot really go bad with this album, it is just great. Yeah, it is a great album, you ought to check it out if you like the progressive metal genre.

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