Proloud - Rebuilding

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Proloud - Rebuilding

Artist:	Proloud
Title:	Rebuilding
Label:	Sublime Label III 062002
Length(s):	54 minutes
Year(s) of release:	2002
Month of review:	[03/2003]

Line up

Emi Pierro - drums
Giancarlo Mattei - lead vocals
Christian Zezza - guitars
Marco Donello - keyboards
Mikele Zanni - bass

Tracks

1)	Self Destruction	0.32
2)	Fickle	8.16
3)	Leave It To Nature	8.41
4)	Island Lake	7.40
5)	Shooting Star	3.47
6)	Gethsemane	4.55
7)	Last Inhabited Planet	7.00
8)	To Be On Fire	9.06
9)	Rebuilding (Leave It To Mother Nature Reprise)	4.14

Summary

Starting out as a Dream Theater cover band in 1986, Proloud after a number of line-up changes wanted more. This is their first album. Like all the albums on Sublime (and before that irIdea), the album has really nice artwork, in this case a oversized digipack and a bunch of postcards.

The music

Opening with the thunderous hurricane of Self Destruction, the album musically kicks off with Fickle, which is indeed a rather Fickle tune. Fast guitar runs, (Italian) accented (at times vocoded) vocals a bit similar to Geddy Lee's, full of breaks, but still with a chorus verse structure overall. Some of the instrumental intermezzo's are full of drive. Halfway, the music dies down to piano and a softly wailing bass. Melancholic. The vocals are on this quiet middle part sound better, more natural. Slowly the music winds its way up again with a rock ballad guitar solo. The Geddy Lee type vocals I like a bit less, too obviously catering for a metal audience. It is certainly not beautiful. The few harmony vocals might also have been left out. The pianic ending is nice again with its whispererd vocals. All in all, a lot of adventure and different feels packed into one song, but the more pure metallic ones I am not that fond of. The vocals are a bit too high and I am not sure the vocalist has the voice for it.

With Leave It To Nature we move into the next track, this time opening with meandering keyboards and percussive playing on the drums. This is really better, some telling vocal parts, not too much up front and a rousing guitar/drum passages making a run for it. I am not that happy with the amateuristic vocal backing. Seems to me that the lyric content of this band is not in line with what other progmetal usually do, something which can also be gathered from the song titles. Anyway, the instrumental intermezzo's on this one are thoroughly jazzy, with plenty of drive when the guitar really wants to. Time for bombast in the second part of the track and it comes out very well.

On Island Lake we open with clear keyboard runs. It seems to me that this band is not simply influenced by the main progmetal bands, but that a liking for some of the older neo-prog bands also exists. This makes them all the more interesting for the prog audience. The vocal melodies are a bit too uneventful, notwithstanding a strong (also melodic) ending.

Shooting Star takes it a bit stiller, with soft keyboards and acoustic guitar. The melody is rather mellow, but also peaceful. The song is mainly built around an appealing vocal melody. Gethsemane is again not a terribly long track, but harbours plenty of rhythmic complexity and synthetic strings. Again this sounds more like a heavy prog band, than a pure progmetal band. I would be hard put to explain you why, but that is how I feel it. Maybe Rush is in this case a better reference, although the songs are definitely less compact. Some nice driving piano in this instrumental as well.

Last Inhabited Planet opens with rhythm guitar and vocals with plenty of drama. The double drums and the biting vocals make for quite an aggressive package. The keyboards dance along in the back, but the music is mainly a metal affair, especially because of the screamy metal style vocals. Plenty of breaks in here to convince that it is is progmetal which they are playing, but it doesn't make me like the song any better. Halfway we move into an acoustic middle part accompanied with tempo changes. Then the music takes a turn for the majestic, but I can not escape the impression that the fiddling about here does not lead anywhere. A little more restraint would really help here.

To Be On Fire is the longest track on the album with swirly keyboards and an fast Rush like feel. Melodically, the song leaves to be desired. The band tends to go through the moves (of progmetal), but does not seem to be able to add to the foregoing. In fact, it seems to me the inspiration is fading, especially in the area of vocal lines. The metal takes over more and more. The complexer parts seem to have little reason for being here. Having a few good moments in a song is simply not good enough (there are some at the end for instance).

Rebuilding (Leave It To Mother Nature reprise) is as the subtitle says a reprise of an earlier song. It contains some nice strumming guitar giving the album a positive ending. The vocals are a bit in the back now, but they are at least back to normal again.

Conclusion

Although I am not always comfortable with the vocals (especially in the more progmetallic parts), and you should be able to disregard the Italian accent that crops quite often, this album is certainly not bad. Okay, the band sometimes slips and forgets to include melodies with appeal, but especially in the middle of the album the songs are built around interesting melodies and have both something of prog and of progmetal in them. There they also succeeds in bringing over a certain mood in a song. At the end of the album, it seems to me the inspiration was more or less gone, with the band moving more distinctly in the direction of Dream Theater. Especially the vocal parts leave something to be desired here. Production wise the band can also improve, but this is usually a simple matter of experience.