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Project Elimi is the second album by German Progressive Metal band Tangent Plane, which was released in 2011. The mammoth album features a total of seventy-six minutes of music spread over eight tracks. That sounds ideal for a progressive metal release right?
Indeed all the ingredients within Project Elimi are right – variation, heavy riffs, symphonic keyboards, good use of acoustics, an over twenty minute long song (the closing title track), and good production. This recipe, when written on paper, is one than I (and I expect other prog fans as well) should be drooling over waiting for it to be cooked up, but the chef that put this together needs some more cooking lessons, because for some reason all the elements in the pot are correct, yet the result just doesn’t work. Or rather it just doesn’t work as well as it should, Project Elimi isn’t without its redeeming factors, indeed every song has the odd moment that hints of how well the album could have worked. It is not offensively bad which is a blessing, but the release just fails to capture me as well.
Aside from the fact that I don’t think the band has put all those elements together particularly well, my biggest complaint about Project Elimi is the vocals. Jan Michaelis does have some stronger moments, but most of the time he comes across, for want of a better word, as irritating, and much of his delivery sounds forced. A better singer might actually have saved the album from the complete drag of mediocrity than I have ended up viewing it as. That’s what the album comes across for the most part, a complete drag. The songs are generally long with the twenty-two minute piece along with three others clocking in over mine minutes, and another two over seven. Only one, Do You Live, comes in at under five minutes. I actually found that one of the better tracks on the album along with Deadborn, which showcases that Tangent Plane could potentially offer something good up. Again I did not enjoy some of the vocal performance of Deadborn, although it is generally more bearable than on some tracks. It still drags it parts of its near ten minute duration, albeit less so than it could have done as per the rest of the album’s example.
Project Elimi isn’t an unbearable listen, but it’s not exactly memorable either as much of it is just unremarkable, especially the title track which never really gets going in over twenty minutes despite the band’s best efforts. I have heard much worse albums though, but the most positive thing I can say about the album is that it showcases the band’s potential if nothing else. The band should really analyse what they did with the short song Do You Live, since the band seems a much stronger unit playing shorter pieces that all these long ones. It’s quite possible to play progressive metal without long songs, just listen to most of Evergrey’s output for evidence of that. That’s the issue here I think, the band seems to have tried too hard to write long tracks.
In conclusion I write this album off as a missed chance. The elements are here but it just needs to be executed better towards the band’s apparent strengths. A change in singer would not go amiss either, or at the very least the current one needs to up his game. I mentioned earlier than his vocals sounded forced, but that’s true of the whole album really. I’m sure this would have been a much stronger effort if it felt a little more natural. Still if these guys can iron out the bugs then they do have potential to be a force to reckon with. They’re worth taking note of for that at the moment, and I hope to be pleasantly surprised by these guys on a future effort.
(Originally written for Heavy Metal Haven, scoring 4.8/10)