SUBTERRANEAN MASQUERADE: Mountain Fever (PROGRESSIVE METAL): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

As one of the most influential and inventive bands in Eastern metal, Subterranean Masquerade is releasing their long-awaited fifth album, "Mountain Fever" this summer. Tinged with oriental influences, the progressive metal of the Israelis plays on a great variety of arrangements that we find from the first bars of 'Snake Chermer' and throughout 'Diaspora My Love', an elegant ballad with intimate pop sounds and a more abrupt finale carried by some raging growls. A surprising but subtle mix.

The panel proposed by the first three tracks forbids any weariness as the band sparkles with inventiveness and variety between 'Mountain Fever' starting like a Bowie classic to end in the intensity of an oriental metal a la Orphaned Land. A great creative and emotional gap that works from the first listening. The clear vocals oscillate between Geoff Tate, David Bowie and Domenik Papaemmanouil (Wastefall) and the balance with the growls/screams phases is perfectly dosed. The melody holds a dominating place in all the tracks and this on the clear song as on the extreme. Some tracks like 'Somewhere I Sadly Belong' have an extreme vocal part but always counterbalanced by a catchy melody.

The album doesn't weaken in its second half and even raises in emotion with 'The Stillnox Oratory', a haunting ballad magnified by a masterful Davidavi Dolev who modulates his voice in a very expressive register before ending on something very rough and concluding very gently. The more traditional progressive metal of the excellent 'Ascend' reminds Queensrÿche or Kingcrow, again for its immediate melodies, before fading away in front of a title sung in Hebrew of a beautiful intensity. As for 'For The Leader, With String Music', it constitutes the progressive summit of an album in constant evolution, of a moving music which finds its essence in this title with a complex construction and which is not without reminding the Opeth of "Deliverance" between intense brutality and subtle softness.

The album ends on what everyone could take for the final small acoustic ballad, but 'Mångata' quickly takes an epic turn which makes it a magnificent closer and which will finish to persuade you that this "Mountain Fever" is a masterpiece, not only of the discography of Subterranean Masquerade but also one of the most outstanding productions of this year. It is an inventive, very well constructed and brilliant album that keeps you on the edge of your seat until the last bar and for many listenings. A must-have that will surely be in the top 5 at the end of the year. - Official website

SUBTERRANEAN MASQUERADE

MOUNTAIN FEVER

SENSORY

PROGRESSIVE METAL