Pentesilea Road
s/t

It can be hard not to draw parallels to Fates Warning when looking at Vito F. Mainolfi’s band Pentesilea Road as both Ray Alder and Mark Zonder are appearing in several of the tracks on the self-titled debut. The cover looks like something progressive, just like Fates Warning. We have an article that you can read about the band in case you want to know a bit more about them, and how Vito looks at his creation. I have been listening to this one for a while now, mainly because I have had difficulty finding time to put words on the white papers on the screen and because the album is quite long with over seventy minutes playing time.

It is progressive metal and to draw parallels to previously mentioned Fates Warning isn’t hard, but you can also mention many others in the progressive style like Dream Theater or Devin Townsend to add a few more. They have lots of variation and a fairly dynamic style, good sound and a good vocalist with a bit of an Italian accent. The 72 minutes the album plays for tends to be a bit on the long side, I think there are some parts that aren’t adding anything to the story, parts that I think they could have done without. Things like that could give the sense of it being a debut album, I would like to imagine that a more mature band would have been more selective with what they included on the album.

Pentesilea Road is a strong album despite the long playing time, in its best moments I would say that it is excellent. But unfortunately it is not just excellent, there are other parts that they should have left out. It is probably best when Ray Alder does the guest vocals, but Shades of the Night is also worth mentioning as a strong track. The weakest is probably the tame Stains that doesn’t do much at all for me. I was considering a higher rating, but as there are some weaknesses that I don’t really like I decided to go for the middle rating as I think it fits the best despite the excellent parts and strong soundscape.

Fans of the progressive genre should have a look at this album, they will most likely find it very agreeable. I have enjoyed this promising debut and I look forward to a new release that is a bit shorter, more to the point, and that plays to enhance the strengths of the band. This debut may be around average in general, but it has some excellence that is well worth hearing.

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