SILENCE

A few years ago I reviewed the instrumental debut CD of SILENCE, a French band formed around multi-talented instrumentalist Bruno Vesque. This album, entitled 'Trouble in paradise', was an incredible piece of high quality mixture between AOR/Melodic Rock and Progressive Heavy Rock/Metal. Now, vocalist Jerome Cazard has joined forces with Bruno, and the result is SILENCE's new CD 'Utopia' (out on MTM MUSIC). Together they wrote 12 tracks for the 2nd SILENCE CD, and
also included a cover of KIM WILDE's 80s smash hit "Kids in America". The album has a great production (by Bruno himself) and all I can say it's a very strong album that is recommended to fans of both Progressive Rock/Metal and AOR/Melodic Rock.

There are a lot of highlights on the album, and there's not a single weak track to be found on the CD, so all in all, an interesting release! My favourite tracks are "A new freedom" (quite excellent midtempo progressive melodic rock a la 80s QUEENSRYCHE, yet with an AOR influence as well), "Come back" (fantastic huge midtempo AOR), "Against the wind" (great progressive melodic rocker a la ZENO), "Strange sounds" (high quality progressive AOR) and "Consolation" (another awesome progressive AOR song). But like I said, everything sounds perfect on this album, as I think the fans of progressive rock/metal a la early FATES WARNING/QUEENSRYCHE will enjoy songs like "Why not today", "No life on planet earth" and "Utopia" a lot. There's something for everyone on this great album. Another great release from France!

Rating: 8,5/10 (Review by Gabor Kleinbloesem)