DISTORTED HARMONY — Utopia (review)

DISTORTED HARMONY — Utopia album cover Album · 2012 · Progressive Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
bartosso
Six pieces of noble cheese

Traditional progressive metal is often considered to be cheesy, stagnant and derivative. Let's see... "traditional" and "progressive". Not a very fortunate choice of words. Isn't the first one an antonym of the other one? Well, it is, usually. Distorted Harmony managed to bend the rules of semantics though. UTOPIA is dripping with traditional prog metal elements - keyboards, synths and virtuosity. All this, however, is just a wrapping for some really well-crafted, inventive and emotionally charged metal music.

As usual, production is not without significance. What often bothers me about modern prog releases, is that the sound feels overproduced and artificial. Fortunately, UTOPIA's sound is indeed polished yet infused with a healthy dose of organic sharpness and spiced with a pinch of old-school prog rock softness. As a result, all assets of the album - intricate passages, theme changes with underlying symphonic prog basis - are well highlighted.

"Apparently Michael Bublé wouldn't be so dull if he stopped rehashing ideas of Frank Sinatra and started a prog metal band." That's what I thought right after hearing Misha Soukhinin's voice in "Kono Yume". His vocals are one of the best things about Distorted Harmony, no joke! Expressive, well trained and original. Especially when compared to typical prog metal vocalists, trying to sound like James LaBrie or Geoff Tate. Misha's voice reminds me of Michael Bublé (darn, I feel like I shouldn't be saying this) and his timbre suits the music very well. As for the music, UTOPIA consists of six intricate compositions, deeply rooted in classic progressive metal and underlaid with strong symphonic prog rock element. All that tinged with Opeth's eclectic approach to harmony and... some pop catchiness. At times I feel like some of the cheesy parts could have been avoided but as a whole, UTOPIA is a top-notch progressive metal release.

I'm not by any means a fan of traditional progressive metal. I don't like Dream Theater and Queensrÿche get on my nerves. Still, I really like this album. So, even if you're not into this sub-genre of metal music, give Distorted Harmony a chance to, ermm... distort your tastes... clumsy pun, eh?
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