VELVET THUNDER

The style of the furrow that Paralydium choose to plough is clear: it bears the names Symphony X and Dream Theater right along it. These are influences that the band wear proudly on their sleeves, and I very much doubt that they would refute the comparison. After all, if you’re going to use someone as your template, then it might as well be the best, right?

Frontiers records, still largely known for its melodic metal output, goes full-bore Progressive Metal with this release from Swedish outfit Paralydium. They have been active for pushing a decade now, but if you haven’t heard of them, don’t be surprised – this is only their second full-length album release in that time, so they haven’t exactly been saturating the market (the debut, Worlds Beyond, appeared in 2020, with only an EP before that in 2015, the year the band formed). So what they haven’t done is to overstretch themselves, trying to come up with new material on a conveyor belt principle. The question is, has that paid off in terms of the quality of the material on this album?

Well, yes and no would be the short, if indecisive answer. To get the ‘yes’ part of the equation addressed, there is very much to like about this album. The style of the furrow that Paralydium choose to plough is clear: it bears the names Symphony X and Dream Theater right along it. These are influences that the band wear proudly on their sleeves, and I very much doubt that they would refute the comparison. After all, if you’re going to use someone as your template, then it might as well be the best, right? The playing here is excellent throughout, as are the vocals of Alexander Lycke – who is new since the previous record. The music ticks all the right boxes as well, and often impresses. The portentously-titled opener Prelude is as grand in scale as you would hope, while the first track ‘proper’ (and first single) Sands Of Time is tightly structured and properly ‘epic’ in its use of sweeping melodic grandeur and powerful riffing. Likewise Forging The Past, a somewhat longer and less focused piece, takes the power baton and happily runs with it. The ‘prog’ and ‘metal’ synthesis is certainly being adhered to impressively, and this doesn’t change as the first part of the 24-minute combined centrepiece arrives with The Arcane Exploration Part I. There is going to be a second part, of course, and it will close the album at 13 minutes, but oddly the two halves are separated, partly by the short Interlude, which would work well, but also by the entirely stand-alone track Caught In A Dream (nope, Dream Theater fans, that’s not Caught In A Web or Lifting Shadows Off A Dream, but the title does call them to mind).

This hits the mark as to the first part of that ‘no’ category mentioned above: the album sequencing. Now, splitting a track can work well, but usually if the two halves open and close the record – such as Shine On You Crazy Diamond or In The Presence Of Enemies – but having the first part emerge mid-runtime and then be separated by just a couple of other tracks just doesn’t seem to work in the same way. Interlude would be a fine way to insert a natural break and connect the two halves to each other, but placing Caught In A Dream in there sems an odd decision. I personally would have moved it to after Forging The Past as track four, but it’s not a critical issue. The more fundamental problem with this, and in fairness scores of other Prog-Metal outfits may I add, comes down to one thing and one thing alone: tunes. Or hooks if you prefer to put it that way. Long, labyrinthine songs seemingly more keen on impressive playing than providing a memorable ‘earworm’ to remember after the album finishes – at 50 minutes, which is at least a good length for an album, avoiding the ‘metal fatigue’ situation in favour of a manageable length in terms of total one-sitting listening.

The hook deficiency wherein a series of mid-to-long songs make up an album release somewhat facelessly began plaguing Dream Theater albums following, for the sake of argument, Train Of Thought or possibly the later Systematic Chaos. For Dream Theater it has proved popular to go this way, but in actual fact I would argue that it coincided with something of a critical and partially commercial downturn for them. Whatever the genre of music, it is important to have something at least to anchor in listeners’ minds, and that does not mean becoming more ‘commercial’ No-one could accuse, for example. Yes’s Close To The Edge, Tales From Topographic Oceans or Relayer as being anything other than a trio of dense, complex works – but if you know those albums, what comes into your mind at the mention of them? Perhaps ‘Even Siberia goes through the motions’ or ‘Close to the edge, down by the river’. Maybe ‘Nous Sommes Du Soleil, we love when we play’ or ‘Soon, oh soon the light’. These are all hooks sprinkled among some weighty song structures to allow them to make their home in the listener’s brain and make them come back again to hear them once more. Paralydium, for the most part, do not do this. I found myself thoroughly enjoying almost the whole of the seven tracks here, but virtually nothing of it could I recall within ten minutes of the music finishing. And that is, in a nutshell, an issue bedevilling not just Paralydium, but the prog-metal genre as a whole.

Basically, if you like this sort of stuff – as I do – then it is very hard to see you not at the very least enjoying this album. If you are a fan of latter-day Dream Theater albums, and perhaps even earlier ones such as Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence or Octavarium, then you will be very likely to embrace this band into your record collection and wonder how you went all this time without discovering them. To appeal beyond that core crowd, however, Paralydium need some strong actual tunes to spread their appeal in a way that they deserve to do.