Silent Voices - Building Up The Apathy
Low Frequency Records

Fons: Do not let the above mentioned genre indication mislead you. In accordance with the Lords Of Metal guide lines, we have to categorize each CD in a particular genre, to make things a little bit easier for our readers. However, this third Silent Voices album is perfectly balanced between power metal and prog metal, which covers the power metal indication only partially.

I have to say that I was very pleasantly surprised by ‘Building Up The Apathy’, the third album of these five Finnish guys, featuring Sonata Arctica keyboard player Henrik Klingenberg. A very well produced prog/power metal effort featuring eight superbly performed and well structured compositions. Silent Voices’ music has to be placed somewhere between the ‘Train Of Thought’ era of Dream Theater and the mid tempo songs of Sonata Arctica and Stratovarius. In normal English this means technically played metal combined with catchy melodies and occasionally a couple of very catchy choruses.

The opening track is a nine minute classic, called ‘World’s End’, a very strong composition combining the best of the abovementioned worlds. What a classic! This song is the best example of what you can expect the following 50 minutes. Lead vocalist Michael Henneken is a very talented and promising singer. His high but kind of raw vocals mix perfectly with Silent Voices’ complex music. The other tracks all last about seven minutes and they kept me listening attentively during all of them. In ‘Hollowed’ we find a beautiful moment of peace, and the final song ‘Into The Flow’ has a little depressive impression, and accentuates the band’s qualities for the very last time on this album… ‘Building Up The Apathy’ is an excellent album, and Silent Voices is a perfect band for the upcoming Prog Power festival in Baarlo (NL) later this year! A very promising act of which we will hear a lot more in the future!

Rating: 90/100 (details)

http://www.silentvoices.net