Beyond The Bridge - The Old Man And The Spirit

If you like the idea of Dream Theater with the additional flavor of a female vocalist, you should check out Germany's Beyond The Bridge - like now.Like it or not, I'm most likely to compare any progressive metal band to Dream Theater the gold standard which you may judge as fair, lazy, short-sighted, or whatever.  The thing is, I often run across bands billed as such that sound certainly progressive, but have none of the crunchy guitar that goes with it.  But let that go.

German progmetal kids Beyond The Bridge tell a familiar tale of like-minded musicians meeting in school and reuniting again years after going their separate ways in pursuit of families and careers.  While their latest release, The Old Man And The Spirit, borrows heavily from the Dream Theater formula, they bring to the party a more complex vocal arrangement with the addition of a female vocalist in Dilenya Mar. Interestingly, however, it's this addition that confounds me. I'm so used to progmetal being a masculine sound, for lack of a better phrase, and the sound of a woman's voice (even one as mature and impressive as Dilenya's) causes my brain to say "Oh, this is a symphonic metal band, like Within Temptation". But to worry about that is to miss what the band is trying to achieve.

The Old Man And The Spirit is your basic concept album with all of the ambition such an artistic endeavor entails, with Ms. Mar providing the voice of The Spirit, while Herbie Langhans sings for The Old Man. Together, with the rest of BTB, they weave a tale of the "polarity of human sensuousness and awareness". I love this kind of stuff when it's done well, and that's exactly how Beyond The Bridge does it on their debut release. I can't vouch for the production, as the vocals and the instruments get obscured here and there in favor of one or another, but this is a solid first effort. Guitarist Peter Degenfeld is quite talented, displaying a very tasteful Petruccian phrasing while still having his own identifiable sound. I look forward to hearing it develop over the band's career.  One other nitpick is the sound of Christopher Tarnow: This is a man who's obviously classically trained on the piano, but he seems to have been shopping at the dollar store for his patches. I say we take up a collection so he can get the next Jordan Rudess Primo Pack at the Korg store.

The Bottom Line: Classic progmetal stylings with all the trimmings - I mean, a concept album for a debut, no less - with about the level of production you'd expect from a young band's first studio effort. Very Dream Theater-y, but the addition of a female vocalist adds a certain je nais cest qoi that makes their next effort quite ripe with possibilities.

Outstanding Tracks: The Apparition, Where The Earth And Sky Meet, The Struggle (some great Savatagesque vocal interchanges)

- Genghis was really cranking this stuff up at one point...