Band:	Hybrid Circle
Album:	Before History
Style:	Progressive death metal
Release date:	February 27, 2012
A review by:	Darkside Momo

01. Intro
02. Ouverture 209
03. The Preacher
04. Not Different From Us
05. Plan Cyber VAC
06. Wisdom Popular
07. Teamwork
08. Project Bait
09. The Factory
10. Onset
11. Never The Same Again
12. Cysquare Zero
13. Outro
14. Circle [acoustic version][bonus]

The way tooooooo long spoken "Intro" track leaves no doubt about it: this is a concept story - and probably not of the best sort. See, if you need a three-minutes long track full of bla-bla-bla just to set the setting of your story, you're probably doing it wrong already. Storytelling-wise, and (probably? Probably!) music-wise too.

And as soon as the second track called "Ouverture 209" kicks in, you know for sure the 55 minutes of this Before History will be long indeed. This modern-sounding 'progressive' metal, with its sci-fi story of sorts (apparently based on a book written by the vocalist, keyboardist and one of the guitar players), feels like a pseudo-complicated package for classical melodeath/metalcorish stuff. And a bad one at that, with almost no variation between the songs and terribly repetitive, uninteresting harsh vocals. The clean ones aren't any better, mind you. Also, most of the keys have a terrible sound (the solo on "The Preacher" is but a sad example) - just to add insult to injury, maybe? Sure, some of the guitar leads are good, but even those don't feel really original. And OK, I have to say that "The Factory" is actually a decent song.

I could go on and on, but you already got the point. This is far from the best band that ever came out of Italy, probably one of the worst to be blunt. There's no groove, no emotion, even in technically or 'progressiveness' they are easily outmatched by most of their countrymen. Avoid!