Band:	Alchemy Room
Album:	Origin Of Fears
Style:	Progressive metal
Release date:	June 2008

01. Inside My Fear
02. La Fin Absolue Du Monde
03. Obsession Red Blood
04. Lost
05. Waking The Child Part 1
06. Waking The Child Part 2

The first time I saw this CD I thought; "probably it's only my promo-copy that looks like this because their printer ran out of blue or something like that". Hence I was shocked when I discovered that it was no mistake, the album cover is actually supposed to look like a blinding yellow forest with a red kid in it. But hey, let's talk about music instead of bad album covers. While listening to it for the first time, a joke I had heard long ago came back to me from out of the blue. "How many prog musicians does it take to screw in a light bulb?" "Only one, however it takes him about three quarter hours".

Alchemy Room make each and every one of their songs wind around a myriad of corners, until it becomes nearly impossible not to get lost in them. It wouldn't surprise me if guitarist and mastermind Fabio La Manna himself often forgets where he wants his songs to go. Speaking of, Origin Of Fears has a playing time of 58 minutes, spread over 6 tracks. Assuming you know your maths, it's obvious that the band likes to stretch things out. The vocal duties are handled by Miss Irene Mondino. Her voice isn't unpleasant, but clearly lacks power. Then again the vocals aren't really important here anyway. Most of it is instrumental and all of it focuses heavily on guitar work. Fabio is an excellent guitarist, but when listening to a CD that lasts almost an hour and consists to about two thirds of his guitar solos, it can get extremely tedious. The whole album lacks a lot in the variation department too.

In the end Origin Of Fears doesn't really stand out. If it were more detailed musically-speaking, had more variation or if a lot of it were massively shorter, it would have been a lot better. The way it is there is no possible way of telling which song is currently playing because they are so similar. People who love to trace very complicated song-structures might be delighted by this release, but for most music-lovers the verdict will be: boring.

PS: The whole album is available for listening on their myspace page.