The 9th Cell
Galga de Zebra Ilesa

A one man band consisting of David Pais who does most of the stuff on this album, albeit he has some guests being featured in the different songs of his debut on a record label. But he has released lots of albums under his own financing having been active since 2005, and I have no idea about anything concerning this band and their goings on (or his goings on perhaps). It was not easy to find info on it either considering that the press sheet was quite short and the web wasn’t swarming with stuff either, I was trying for some reviews to see which similar bands to write but it ended with me writing stuff that Pais has been involved with in some part. There were two reviews on the web one positive and one rating the album mid-scale. The cover artwork is no work of art as far as I’m concerned, and the talk is about progressive metal which is something of a hit or miss genre, when done well it is amazing and when done not so well it is as fun as eating wallpaper glue.

This is more to the latter if I am honest but decent enough to interest in some fashion and to be considered good as an end rating. It is progressive with some long songs, some complex instrumentation, some atypical structuring, vocals that alter between clean and growling and there is a lot going on all the time. It is that wall of sound that many bands achieve, something making it a bit difficult to make out the nuances of the songs which is something they would have benefitted from considering that there are quite many nuances there, somewhere in a thick mist of sound blending together into something you cannot really see through. The production is okay and so is the vocals, neither of them is especially amazing to be honest. The variation is good and shows a wide range of ideas and some healthy songwriting skills and imaginations, too bad then that the album goes on forever hiding these nice ideas in a racket of sound that never ends, which it starts feeling like when playing it after having heard it once or twice. It has a bit of an “Andromeda complex” meaning that there is too much going on and given equal space making it into something that ends up lacking everything it has somewhere hidden, now I am not saying that this band sounds like Andromeda but they are a good comparison to what happens when you try too hard.

I still think this is decent enough to interest those who wants all their music progressive, it has some positives and it has some negatives and for me these are of an equal balance when summarising the album which makes it one of those middle scorers. I also think it will be one of those albums that are good when played but then left in some dungeon completely forgotten and left to gather dust for a million year before being excavated by a dutch billionaire archeologist who finds it quite dreary and leaves it as a museum piece over how albums looked back in the dark ages. No real standout song is another thing you will notice, albeit none really bad either.

In the end though I would like to advice against using this annoying voiceover which I though was long gone in history, “you’re listening to…, for promotional use only” it is annoying to review such albums and might (not in this case though) be detrimental for the impression of the album. Last time I heard that awful shit (which I hate as much as my annoying neighbours) was back in 2008 from Massacre and AFM whom at least had the decency and common sense to leave the three first song without voiceover so you could hear those uninterrupted, on this album all songs have this and I see no real point in doing it anyway because who would want to steal this anyway? and those who do are so few so it should be easy to find the watermarks and pin it to the one who has spread the album like that. Anyway, that was just a parenthesis and all in all this is a good enough album, nothing spectacular but quite decent and a good but long listen.