ASPERA — Ripples (review)

ASPERA — Ripples album cover Album · 2010 · Progressive Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
3.5/5 ·
Stephen
I was only discovered this band recently when a friend of mine told me that a bunch of under-20 kids played a complex and intriguing composition of prog-metal genre yet still sounded very much melodic. At first spin, you can safely stated that their musical path is clearly a derivative of Dream Theater, Symphony X, and Pagan's Mind, which the latter band mentioned possessed the same nationality with Aspera. These Norwegian boys delivered an expertly crafted songs and splendid musicianship throughout the album, an astounding achievement indeed, judging from their young ages.

"Ripples", the starter, plundered most of the composition from Dream Theater's earlier era, but this time they plunged a jar of melodic metal and a handful of dominating keyboard sounds to spiced up the song and the result is amazingly enjoyable. "Do I Dare?" borrowed Symphony X's element with a surprising AOR moment on its chorus. "Remorse" is clearly another implementation of Dream Theater's teaching with an intense duel of Ognedal-Henriksen at the interlude before swelled with a symphonic chant ending. "Between Black And White" is an enigmatic 8-minutes epic but still easy to digest as there are a lot of friendly notes here and there.

I could jokingly claimed that "Catatonia Coma" could be a huge Linkin' Park hit if they chose to play prog. It has a traceable contemporary touch with beautiful chorus and a clock tick of Middle-East flavor in the later part of the song, perfected with Ognedal's skillful solos intercepting the rhythm. The calming "Reflections" made a good short ballad with a haunting acoustic guitar/piano combo before they blow the final whistle with "The Purpose", a thick guitar sound accompanying Henriksen's dancing fingers on his keys, definitely a magnifying closer.

Although the riffage, the passage, the solos, everything sounded dejavu, like you've heard them somewhere, I see a vast room of improvement in the future and time will award them their true identity. A tiny annoying factor is probably Pettersen's vocal that felt to me somewhat like an alternative rock singer forcing his throat for metal, kinda strange but when he sings, he sings great, so it's a zero-sum math anyway. Alas, I feel the need to raise my hat, and my glass of beer, to toast the band for a world-class hand-clapping debut, kudos!
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