Twinspirits Italy

"Italian progressive metal has often been accused of being too influenced by Dream Theater - to the point that there's talk of countless Italian Dream Theater clones. Well, the Dream Theater influences are present on this album, but Twinspirits are by no means a Dream Theater rip-off, as they opt for a an original and more broad-ranging sound.

Despite their originality, Twinspirits' "The Legacy" is very much a typical prog metal album containing all the elements that make good progressive metal such as pompuous songs, guitar shredding, and spacey keyboards - and there is also the epic suite, in this case a son cycle in five parts. The suite, "The Endless Sleep" is more of a progressive power metal thing - it starts of with a classical chamber music intro but then most of the following riffage is actually not too complex or technical (while the composition itself is, of course, complex).

Maybe I make it sound like run-of-the-mill progressive metal, but Twinspirits deserve credit for injecting a big dose of catchiness into their songs, and especially the choruses a catchy, much like in European power metal. Also, Twinspirits are not afraid of buffing up their songs with riffage that is more reminiscent of classic 80s metal than sophisticated and arty prog metal, and there is also some djent to some of Twinspirits' rhythmic patterns.

On the downside, the music is very cheesy, and some of the vocal melodies sound more like taken from an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical than from a progressive metal album... but then again, perhaps breaking down the genres between metal and musicals is a very progressive thing to do. And hats off to that, but that does not make the music any less cheesy to my ears.

That being said, this is not a bad album at all. It should be finger lickin' good if you are a fan of epic sounding melodic progressive metal.

(review originally posted on metalmusicarchives.com)"