FRAMEPICTURES — Remember It (review)

Album · 2010 · Progressive Metal

3/5 · 2011-01-15
Andyman1125

Another Dream Theater wannabe band! Yay! Framepictures is a new Portugal based band that obviously has high aspirations for themselves in the progressive metal world. The music is high quality, as Galileo Records seems to promote greatly in their bands. The music itself is great, but there is one problem: their main influence is to blatantly obvious (Dream Theater). They sound like Dream Theater with Pagan's Mind's singer. Although criticizing anyone similar to Dream Theater is hard for me because I'm such a fan boy, yet another prog metal band wanting to be Dream Theater isn't exactly needed.

Memories Faded Away is a strong intro. Musicianship is great, but the vocal melodies are much too similar to Pagan's Mind for comfort. It scares me that the singer sounds like the singer from PM also, so it's a little uncanny. The riffs are similar to Dream Theater's Octavarium album also. The song is great, but it's not original.

Remember It, the title track, is a more melodic symphonic track. It is a little more original, venturing into the crossover region of prog. It doesn't rely as much on Dream Theater as much, but the symphonic section of the chorus is reminiscent of Octavarium again. I think I've pinpointed their favorite album. The musicianship, technicality, melody and everything else is great, but their influences are a little too prominent.

Call For Me kind of scares me. With the tracks before, at least there was some originality and their influence wasn't completely dominant. But with this, I swear they took the bass intro right out of Sea of Lies by Symphony X, and then took some of the guitar riffs. It's sad. Certainly there is *some* original work in the song, and the presentation is phenomenal, but it is just too similar to other band's work.

Don't Trust My Eyes is a nice melodic song that doesn't have as much prevalent and obvious influenced riffs. The melodies and rhythms are very nice. It probably the most original work on the album. It's creative, pretty, and is just an overall good song.

Why Nobody Cares is also a very original song, and probably the most fun you'll have while listening to the album. The chorus has a catchy riff, and the prevalent slap bass soling is a nice change of pace.

Shadows Black and Grey is a darker track, with a heavy wah-wahed intro, with some heavy powerchords. The ensuing riffage is nice, characteristic of most prog metal with so specific band in general. So far so good. The melodies are nice, the instrumental sections are good, overall, it's a good track.

My Will to Live, the epic last track, lasting for nearly 26 minutes, has some great qualities and some more a little too influenced qualities. The track is a good one, although it goes back to those Octavarium like riffs and synth sections. The musicianship, again, is great, and so are the rhythms. The tom-tom drum rhythms are very similar to Portnoy's but, they have their own original twist, so the track is still an original epic. When the vocals come in, it reminds me of Octavarium's riffs yet again. The dynamics don't change very often, so the track can get redundant, but when it does change, it's nice. Again we have some slap bass, which is a unique feature to FramePicture. One part of the song is almost identical to a large section of In the Name of God by Dream Theater, which scares me. However, overall My Will to Live is a good track, it just has some prominent similarities to a few Dream Theater songs.

ALBUM OVERALL: Remember It, overall, is a good album. If I had never heard of Dream Theater, it would be a 4 or 5 star album, but I have heard of Dream Theater, so some of the sections are a little uncanny in similarity, even the voices on the keyboards are near identical to Rudess' at some points. The presentation and musicianship are spectacular, especially if the band members can stand up to Dream Theater-like chops. My mentioning Dream Theater so many times may seem like overkill, but it really scares me how similar some of the passages are. To be influenced and have similar music *style* is one thing, it is a very different one to have near identical musical passages. 3+ stars.