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yuri Who'sGOD Who'sDOG?
Joined: 04 Feb 2000 Posts: 5248 Location: South of Voivodland
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Posted: Wed Aug 04, 2004 11:29 pm Post subject: Spastic Ink - Ink Compatible |
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The long awaited second album from Ron Jarzombek's brain child is finally here, after a few years of delays.
For those who don't know, Ron Jarzombek was the guitar player of pioneer prog-metal band Watchtower, which in the mid to late 80's cleared the path for future prog-metal bands such as Dream Theater.
Spastic Ink, as the name indicates, plays very intricate instrumental music that can sound somewhere in between Frank Zappa, Iron Maiden and cartoon music composer Carl Stalling, all within one song!
Was the new album worth the wait?
Well, it depends what you are looking for.
As a fan of Spastic Ink's all instrumental first album, Ink Complete, i was looking for some more of the same mind bending musical gimnastics, but was kind of dissapointed to find out this album had a few songs featuring "vocals" thanks to former Watchtower / Dangerous Toys frontman Jason McMaster and Pain of Salvation / The Flower Kings singer Daniel Gildenlöw.
While the vocals are well done, the musical guests are very talented (Marty Friedman, Jens Johansson, Sean Malone, Michael Manring etc) and the songs are interesting, they are more 'prog-metal' oriented (think Watchtower) than the previous album Ink Complete.
The instrumental songs are very interesting, but the embedded spoken word snippets and narration bits fail to be amusing.
If you are looking for something that sounds like an incarnation of Watchtower, you won't be dissapointed, if you are looking for some 'out there' progressive instrumental music with a heavy sound, break out your old copy of Ink Complete. |
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