M.I.God.
Spectres on Parade

I guess they can be said to have a clever name, albeit it could also be considered somewhat narcissistic depending on who you ask. The band released a debut album in 2012 and now they are releasing album number two, the first part of two in a conceptual story. This first chapter has a pretty nice artwork that reflects the style of the album rather well, and it also has 21 tracks where the final one is a cover of Margaret Berger’s I Feed You My Love that was fourth in the Eurovision Song Contest in 2013. But that isn’t the only thing not quite according to normal procedures, they also misspell the title it should be spectres and not specters which leads one to suspect that a certain Dream Theater might be an inspiration to the band.

And you could describe them as something like In Flames combined with Dream Theater and the style they employ on the Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence album. It is a bit progressive, a bit modern; a bit extreme metal touches can also be found along with some power metal touches as well. The sound is quite dark and the album has seven interludes, kind of the same idea as Kamelot’s Epica. The sound is quite dark in its character so it isn’t a very melodic album; the sound is pretty interesting though. I don’t quite fancy the vocals but they work alright for the album. Then I fancy the playing time even less as I think the album is too long, it doesn’t have the depth or variation to pull of the long playing time that is well over an hour. This album surely would have benefitted from being shorter.

The atmosphere is quite good and invites me to really listen, the problem is that the songs don’t keep me listening and I tend to loose interest towards the end. The last song brings me back to the album, as that cover song is the best and most memorable track on Specters on Parade. And while on the subject of the memorable, the title track is the other track that is memorable on this album. The rest of the songs kind of just pass by without really grabbing my attention. The album would have needed a few more really good songs and it should have been shorter in order to reel me into it and make me listen to the album and the story. Because I find that I don’t really care about this story, and the interludes then becomes pointless and I find that this album has two memorable tracks while the rest of it does nothing for me.

So then I try to figure out who would like this album, the one who wants to give an album time is a good candidate as those who just wants simple hit songs will not get anything out of it. But is it good enough for the ones looking for the more deep and adventurous? I am not sure about that, the concept and all that is ambitious for sure but I am not sure that they really pull it off. The album might be worth checking out don’t count on it being amongst the more exciting albums you have heard. I guess these spectres didn’t quite scare or fascinate me enough to really take notice of the album.

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