Max Pie
Eight Pieces - One World

Eight Chapters - One World, that is what we have here. A World in space judging by the terrific album cover, that all looks very brilliant to me. And I have to say that this album looks exciting at first glance and when reading about it there is much to be excited about as well. Thing is though that many times when something is written like that, it tends to be something a bit off. The band is from Belgium, this is their second album and it follows a debut released in 2011. More than that I do not really know about these guys, according to the press info it all begun as a heavy metal band and then they ended up becoming a more progressive band that is said to be appealing to fans of bands like Symphony X or Kamelot. I guess I’ll take their word for that.

Musically it is a little in between the heavy metal and the progressive metal, it is both and it is neither. The songs are generally quite long with some complex structures and some prominent melodies but they are also very conventional and the album as a whole is not particularly varied despite being only eight tracks on a 53 minute playing time. The singer is fine for the task, neither a class act nor a total failure. The band is very good overall and their sound is very strong, much down to the DGM guy producing possibly since the production style reminds a bit of said DGM. I think that overall this is a rather conventional album and not as progressive as we were led to believe by the press info.

Like Symphony X with a better singer said a quote from a review in the text, I think not. Not that Symphony X has done anything worthwhile in the last decade but Russell Allen is one hell of a singer, I don’t think this band’s singer comes even close. Musically though they are in the same league meaning good stuff that you instantly forget. It runs off you like the raindrops from a summer rain sliding down your well waxed car. So the memorability is an issue with this album, you play it and its fine, it stops and you forget what you just heard. A good thing about that though is that it isn’t like the really poor progressive metal bands who just gets lost amongst their own loose ends and eventually implodes under the weight of their own showcase of delusions of grandeur. These guys just ends up forgotten in a drawer somewhere amongst a great number of other albums you have forgotten over the years. I should add that I have an excellent memory but I tend to gloss over stuff that is average which is exactly what this album is.

I think these guys excels at being rather average, they are a band that is neither, nor. They are neither great, nor bad. They are neither progressive, nor simplistic. Their singer is neither good, nor bad. Their songs are neither short, nor very long. As you can easily tell, they end up being neither one thing, nor another, hence: they are average. Max Pie’s second album is neither good, nor bad, it is somewhere in between 3 and 5 which equals the rating they got.

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