Band:	Darkwater
Album:	Calling The Earth To Witness
Style:	Melodic progressive metal
Release date:	2007
A review by:	Jeff

01. 2534167 [Intro]
02. All Eyes On Me
03. Again
04. Habit
05. The Play - I
06. The Play - II
07. Shattered
08. Tallest Tree
09. In My Dreams

We will do simple things today? So to be simple I will just say that you're just in front of one of the best albums of the year 2007, especially if you like great Progressive Metal. "Calling The Earth To Witness" is the first album of a newcomer from Sweden, Darkwater, a band which was formed in 2003 and which releases its first album this year via the new Swedish label Ulterium Records. I can tell you one thing my friends, this album will probably helps a lot the label to become bigger because it's simply a masterpiece of Progressive Metal. Wowww!

Between Andromeda, Dream Theater and Beyond Twilight, "Calling The Earth To Witness" is a pure jewel of Progressive Metal. Darkwater is a new band, so like you I'm discovering them through this record but their musical maturity is so high already that the best will come for sure for this combo. They use to play a dark and melancholic Progressive Metal full of keyboards lines (a bit like Andromeda) which doesn't lack however of catchy and sharpy guitars riffs and I have nothing to say against the melodies which are all extremely good. All (yes all!) the height songs are real masterpieces of Progressive Metal, they're long and complex with a dozen of rhythm changes and breaks with of course a lot of other surprises. But even if it's complex, I didn't have any feeling of boredom and I can tell you that "Calling The Earth To Witness" is an album easy of access (I'm not saying that it's easy don't misunderstand me!) which doesn't smell the elitist music. It's simply a pure in your face Progressive Metal, a real blast of technical but catchy music.

After that I talked about the quality of the compositions I will talk a bit about the performance of the musicians and the production which is evidently really important too. Here, no problem but it's not surprising when you know that it's Peter Seather who worked on the mixing at Studio Underground, and the mastering was done by Göran Finnberg (Mastering Room) famously known for his work with In Flames, The Haunted or Dark Tranquillity? Plus the guys of Darkwater are just excellent musicians who are able to play real technical and complex music and Henrik Båth is a great surprising singer. You can be sure that we will hear a lot of good words about this young guy.

I will not give the maximum rating to this CD only because I already expect a confirmation of all my positive words. But if Darkwater is able to release some other albums with the same musical quality, then you can be sure that they will become one of the leaders of the European Progressive Metal scene. "Calling The Earth To Witness" is my Progressive surprise of the year 2007 and I hope that you'll follow my words and buy this album as soon as possible, be sure that you'll not be disapointed!