The Sea Within
s/t

Today I have a look at a band called The Sea Within and their debut album with the same name. I guess you can call it something of a supergroup, with members well-known from several acclaimed bands mostly in the progressive bracket. That should bode well for this album but the problem for many supergroups is that they don’t really manage to pool that amazing talent into some amazing music but rather something quite mediocre or worse. Of course I cannot conclude anything before hearing the album and that is why I have been playing it over and over again to see how good it is.

I think the music can be described as progressive rock music with some touches of jazz and electronics and what have you? Kind of like progressive rock music usually does and I am not so sure that they really offer anything we haven’t heard before. I don’t really think this album offer anything fresh or particularly exciting, but really well produced, performed and all of that – great vocals as well. But the album is long with a playing time well past the hour and it even has an extra disc because one isn’t enough, they call it a bonus disc. It might have been better at maintaining the interest of me as a listener had it been a bit more creatively exciting or just have songs with more dynamics, I would say that the sound and all is very strong but the album feels a tad flat.

Can’t say that this album is weak, but neither is it fantastic. The songs sort of blend together into one and none of them really stand out for me. All this talent and they still manage to make an album that feels quite average – too good to be poor but too poor to be great, that is probably the best way of describing an album like this. The eternal playing time doesn’t make things better and the music never really shines. It is nowhere near the best albums of this genre, and I cannot really claim that it is a promising debut either as these guys has so much experience and know-how so they should have been able to make something outstanding the first time around.

So, I think that this is a good but also quite average album for this genre, a rating in the middle is the most logical conclusion for an album like this. Fans of the similar bands and other stuff where you can find these guys performing might find this appealing but they have all done a lot of things that I think is much more exciting and better than this album. This is another one of those albums where great talent leads to a good but not so great album.

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