A Sense Of Gravity - Travail

These guys deftly blend several variants of modern progressive metal with myriad styles akin to bands including Dream Theater, Periphery, Haken, Persefone, and MyGrain. Not to mention how the vocalist masterfully employs several styles to compliment the instrumentation. Listen to track 2: that intro riff!

Listened to the whole thing now. In the end, this will be eaten up by fans of Dream Theater. The musicianship is stellar and the extreme vocals were a nice addition. The cleans run the gamut and occasionally were reminiscent of Mike Patton. Unfortunately, there are some weaker points. Ration Reality and Weaving Memories were both tedious for me with questionable singing and unoriginal compositions. Trichotillomania, while a technical powerhouse, struck me as trying too hard. A lot of the lighter moments just don't work as well for me, which pulled down the latter half of the album quite a bit. In the end, my 3-criteria rating is as follows: Enjoyability=7, Musicianship=9, Innovation=8. I feel pretty comfortable with an 7.5-8 overall.

Good, quality shit. "Stormborn" is great.