UMUR
"Poincare Conjecture" is the debut release by Russian, St.Petersburg based power/progressive metal act Zoliborz. It´s an independently released EP made available at a "Name Your Price" tag in November 2014. The band was formed in 2006 under the Autograder monicker but changed their name to Zoliborz before the release of "Poincare Conjecture". Zoliborz is a duo consisting of Alexander Razhev (songwriting, guitars) and Vitaly Mimoladov (songwriting, guitars), but there are quite a few guests on this release performing among other things vocals and drums.
The 18:54 minutes long EP features 6 tracks. It opens with two "regular" sounding power/progressive metal tracks, featuring vocals, and relatively normal vers/chorus structures. The music style is in a similar vein to artists like Nevermore, Iced Earth, or maybe Control Denied (they don´t sound exactly like neither of those artists, so it´s more an overall description of their sound). After that the rest of the EP is more or less instrumental and turns in a more progressive direction (there´s even a short techno section featured in "Hangovered").
The musicianship is generally on a high level, and the sound production is relatively well sounding and powerful (although there is occasionally an air of amaturism about it). The songwriting however is a bit all over the place, and besides the first two tracks, which indicate a stylistic direction, there´s little on this EP, which displays who Zoliborz really are. It´s always nice when artists have the guts to experiment, but considering the fact that "Poincare Conjecture" is Zoliborz first release, they probably should have gone for a more "straight" stylistic display to help the listener determine their musical identity.
When that is said "Poincare Conjecture" is still a relatively interesting listen, and if Zoliborz weed out some of their less successful progressive ideas and go for a more stylistically consistent sound in the future, there are lots of interesting features to build on in their music. A 3 star (60%) rating is warranted.