Artist: Seventh Wonder
Label: Lion Records
Release: 2006
Rating: 4/5
This is unreal! Scandinavian wunderkinds who ripen and grow up “too early”. This time they’ve grown up into a “seventh wonder”. Seventh Wonder deliver a flawless step up from last year’s debut “Become” (2005)! In every way! Compositionally, in the playing technique itself, in the production and in the atmosphere! For the recording of “Waiting In The Wings”, these insanely ambitious young wunderkinds, or, in grown-up speak, Swedish progressive metallers, were joined by vocalist Tommy Karevik, who is one of the most important factors behind the noticeable jump in quality in the new Seventh Wonder sound. His voice is warm, soft and sensual. He knows how to explode with energy and always release the tension, with an exceptional sense of subtlety.
This is a progressive metal album from head to toe. Technically extremely complex and tailor-made for everyone who loves flawless perfection! In other words, played at lightning speed and at the same time clean and maximally melodic. Perfectly clean and “spot on” in sync. Scales, arpeggios, keyboard and guitar solos machine-gunning back and forth at each other. The breathing of the rhythm section! No less demanding than with Dream Theater! Check out the intro and the work of the rhythm section in the title track! Or the energetic closing section of Walking Tall, where the bass guitar just flashes in its extreme solo rampage. Everybody solos, and I mean everybody!
What the hell am I daring to say… Dream Theater? Depends on who you ask! But the difference is huge. With the latter, you sometimes have to be 100% prepared, and even do a special relaxation technique beforehand, so they don’t tie your nerves into a hopeless Gordian knot by the end, and that’s something you absolutely don’t have to fear when the new Seventh Wonder album is spinning in your CD player. Seventh Wonder make exceptionally tasteful progressive metal. Broken rhythms, sudden tempo changes, counter-rhythms, and the whole performance from the band members is polished down to the hair-splitting detail. It’s all here. Everything shines brilliantly in a top-class instrumental interplay! Everything breathes at a hundred percent! This is the kind of album you can gnaw on and gnaw on and never get to the end of. It takes more time to win it over.
About the complexity? Has anyone started to worry that it might make their head “burn”? Don’t! That’s exactly the charm of Seventh Wonder. Despite the extreme technical complexity, the guys manage to keep a red thread running throughout that’s accessible to the average listener. In other words, they weave their thematic switches together with great finesse. Bands like this often can’t pull that off, and in their urge to show off and prove their manual skills they tear the dynamics of the songs to shreds and kill their fluidity, and with it the magic. Seventh Wonder don’t know the meaning of it! How do they do it? One very handy trick is that they like to sneak onto the powermetal track, but watch out. Not the one of those German brutes, but the track along which bands like Stratovarius or Sonata Arctica ride in atmosphere and sound. But only for a fleeting taste! It’s an important factor that “softens” the compositions so they flow nicely through your ears. The second important factor is the exceptionally warm and sensual vocal line, light years away from any potential “sinusoidal” squealing that would gnaw at you in the high registers. And the third very important one is that neither the guitarist nor the keyboardist dares to overdo the showing off. So soloing, yes! But with a strictly set upper limit of calming down in the song structures! The fourth factor is something Dream Theater could use today! Compact keyboard work, the opposite of brittleness. At times they work in a wall of sound they build up as if a whole symphonic orchestra were with us (Symphony X quality), and that gives “Waiting In The Wings” a touch of epicness and pomp.
If you’re looking for an approximation, an equivalent, or better said, if I may throw in a band for orientation that will help steer you toward figuring out who Seventh Wonder roughly are (besides the fact that they really are a “seventh wonder”) in terms of song construction and atmosphere, the least daring thing would probably be to name the Americans Symphony X. But with a more sophisticated production of the riff-chopping, unlike the sharp “shredding” of Michael Romeo (follow the intro of Banish The Wicked to compare the two bands)! The whole record is cut at an exceptional level of quality and every song is a separate chapter of its own. So many things happen in each one at the same time that you really can’t get bored for even a second. In terms of technical polish, Seventh Wonder are truly the “cutting edge” of today’s progressive metal. The song Devil’s Inc. at its start, when the band strolls through lines “between the notes”, boldly recalls the psychotic feel of the good old Fates Warning. That’s followed, of course, by a gorgeous melodic chorus!
The guitar in the solos approaches the artistry of Y.J. Malmsteen. Naturally, since this is the Scandinavian school of guitar. At times it even sounds as if Malmsteen had been put in to solo for Symphony X, if you know what I’m trying to say. The band has an exceptional sense for keeping things ultra melodic. The superlatives just don’t run out. The songs will blow your mind. Because when you spin “Waiting On The Wings”, you simply can’t believe the perfection of the album. On all fronts. Sound, composition, performance, atmosphere, which means we have a dynamically extremely undulating album in front of us, stringing together all sorts of moods like it’s nothing. What’s incredible is that Seventh Wonder sound utterly genuine. The vibe is Scandinavian. That is, a pinch of gloom, combined with Symphony X “drive”, melodic “clean” vocals that are strong in every register. Intensity that never lets up.
This is the album and this is the band for everyone looking for melodic perfection in the best possible way, combined with a high-voltage use of toys that become downright dangerous weapons in the hands of the Seventh Wonder guys, red-hot spewing a veritable progressive metal fire that sparkles flawlessly in all the bombast that the fact of “rock” offers! Seventh Wonder are a band worth putting under the microscope and following in its future development too. “Waiting In The Wings”, no joke, moves and expands the limits of technical reach set by progressive bands in the nineties, very ambitiously and without any respect for renowned role models, only upward! I wonder what the next album will bring.
Lineup
Tommy Karevik – vocals
Johan Liefvendahl – guitar
Andreas “Kyrt” Söderin – keyboards
Andreas Blomqvist – bass guitar
Johnny Sandin – drums
Production
Tommy Hansen
Track List
1. Star Of David
2. Taint The Sky
3. Waiting In The Wings
4. Banish The Wicked
5. Not An Angel
6. Devil’s Inc.
7. Walking Tall
8. The Edge Of My Blade
Running time: 51:27
