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US metal vocalist Lance King has been in quite the handful of bands by this stage of his career, but it’s taken until 2011 for him to release a solo record. A Moment in Chiros is that solo album, and continues King’s work within the progressive and power metal genres. The album features a host of additional musicians including Morten Gade Sørensen (Wuthering Heights, Pyramaze), Kim Olesen (Anubis Gate), Jacob Hansen (Anubis Gate, Invocator etc), Michael Harris (Darkology, Thought Chamber), Elyes Bouchoucha, Malek Ben Arbia and Anis Jouini (all of Myrath), not to mention several others. In other words there are far too many to list here without dominating the review.
I first encountered Lance King through the band Pyramaze and their album Legend of the Bone Carver, which turned out to be the last for Lance to record with them. The music of A Moment in Chiros puts me somewhat in mind of Pyramaze’s style, although it is noticeably much more openly progressive. Where Pyramaze produced power metal with progressive tendencies Lance King is putting out progressive metal with power metal tendencies. It’s a rebalancing of influences between the two styles, but I can see fans of Lance’s work with Pyramaze lapping up A Moment in Chiros. It also puts me in mind of Anubis Gate’s recent work due to the highly melodic approach to creating progressive metal. With AG’s Kim Olesen being one of the most key instrumentalists here, contributing guitars, bass and keyboards as well as producing the album with his former AG band mate Jacob Hansen, maybe that’s not surprising.
A Moment in Chiros is a solid outing of progressive metal. While highly melodic there are plenty of heavy riffs to sink your teeth into and personally speaking I don’t think I’ve heard Lance King sing better than this. He came across as something of an acquired taste in the Pyramaze days but puts on the sort of performance here that is an instant attention grabber. I haven’t heard the music from all the projects Lance has been involved in, but for me this is without a doubt his best vocal performance so far.
And the music behind him doesn’t let him down either. The tracks are varied, professionally produced and well played. There is a little use of electronic elements but fortunately they don’t hinder this album as they have done in some other metal albums. That’s because they’re there for flavour and don’t dominate the core progressive metal style, something which is never compromised throughout the album’s eleven tracks, although there is the seemingly obligatory ballad in 777. Kibou. Being a concept album is does also fall prey to the use of narration (one reason why it instantly reminded me of Legend of the Bone Carver) that ultimately neither helps nor harms the record in my view.
While there are a couple of tracks that aren’t up to the same standard as the album’s best offerings A Moment in Chiros is overall a highly consistent progressive metal effort from Lance King and his collaborators. An exceptional score is more than deserved and I’m looking forward to hearing more solo work from Lance King.
9.0/10
(Originally written for Heavy Metal Haven (http://metaltube.freeforums.org))