CONCEPT - REASON AND TRUTH - 2003

Yet another Power Metal release from Italy. What an horrible way to start a review right? But doing that, I'm doing a big favor to a lot of readers, who are sick and tired of Italian Power Metal, so they'll just pass onto the next review.

But for all of you that are still reading these lines, let me tell you that "Reason And Truth" is no ordinary release, first, a lot of Progressive elements are present, so I may classify it as Power-Progressive Metal as well; second, just look at the cover art, is beautiful isn't it? And third, the whole idea of the album is pretty intelligent, as the band name hints you, this is a concept album that describes the experiences of an individual who's looking for himself: The actor meets many parts of himself, but he does not recognize them and denies to be what he sees. At the end, the actor realizes that he made a mistake by looking for himself and decides to seek his real "Ego" in other persons who make up the being-in-the-world. The alternation of Progressive parts and Power ones expresses the mutability of human perspective whose combination gives the complex nature of human being. I know is really complicated at first but the once you read the lyrics, which are separated by characters, you'll understand the whole idea better.

This seems like a perfect album, but sadly, is not, for starters, I can't stand the vocalist, his thin and high-pitched voice becomes very annoying after a couple of tracks, and seems like he tries to hard to pronounce each word, the vocals really ruined part of the experience for me. Musically, the band knows what they're doing, although some elements were terribly misplaced, to put as an example, the song "Conceptsymphony" is one of the best songs of the album, but halfway of the song an useless 4 minutes instrumental part is shoved in there.

Besides that, I really enjoyed some of the pieces (putting apart the vocals problems), songs like the opener "Elegy Of Truth", "Living A Lie", Power After Power" and the aftermentioned "Conceptsymphony" are truly great in almost every sense.

So, what to do? Some would recommend to fire the singer, but if he changes his vocal style a bit could be a solution too, because I've read other reviews, and seems that I'm not the only one having troubles with the vocal delivery of Gianni Carcione.
Concept will release another album in 2004, I can't wait to see how the second album turns out to be, best wishes to these guys.
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