Band:	Red Circuit
Album:	Trance State
Style:	Melodic progressive metal
Release date:	2006
A review by:	Jeff

01. Under The Sun
02. Is It Gold?!
03. The Veil
04. Where You Are
05. So Hard To Be Like God
06. Search For Your Soul
07. You Might Have Been Queen
08. The Screen
09. Go Straight
10. Trance State

Red Circuit is a really nice surprise for me. The band of the keyboardist Markus Teske, where are featured great musicians like Chity Somapala, plays a really good Progressive Metal in the vein of Threshold and Vanden Plas. And it's not so surprising to see that the producer of the album are Markus Teske and? Andy Kuntz?

Red Circuit plays Progressive Metal but nevertheless, don't expect something extremely technical and boring in reason of its pseudo-intellectual musical composition. The songs are direct and a track like "Under The Sun" with its excellent catchy melody produced by the keyboards in addition of some big riffs a la Symphony X or Adagio is a pure hit. Also, this is not the first time that I'm talking about him but Chity Somapala is without any doubt one of the best singers of the actual Metal scene. His hoarse vocals will catch your attention and if you still don't know him, I'm sure that a lot of you will fall in love with his voice.

But one of the excellent points of the album is without any doubt the guest performances of some great and talented guitarists: Mr Patrick Rondat on "Search For Your Soul", Stephan Lill on "The Veil" and Stephan Forté on "Is It Gold?!". This is really cool because they give their own touch to the music of Red Circuit, and if I don't say that they change the music at least it's easy to see their influences on the songs. That's classy.

The production is ok but it's not the best that I ever seen too. On a side, since that the songs are powerful and full of big riffs in general it's not so disturbing. We cannot miss the instruments and even if Markus Teske is the "head" of the band it's nice to see that the Keyboards is not overproduced and never hide the others instruments.

The first album of Red Circuit is a really nice production. First they chose some great musicians and an amazing singer but, even if some songs are weaker than some others, the release is full of good things and for a first album this is extremely promising. Fans of heavy Progressive Metal, you'll have to keep an eye on this band, you can trust me.