Evergrey

Recreation Day (Inside Out)
by Martin Popoff

It’s funny. It’s hard for me to break through the mystique of Evergrey (to which I subscribe) into the realm of making this the important soundtrack to life which many respected critic buds and fan friends seem to have done. Two things stop me from shaking the fecund tree that is any given Everygrey album and scooping up the fruit. With respect to Recreation Day specifically, I’m not crazy about the squeaky clean, tight as a drum production, the (over) multiple layers of sound, nor do I care for the old school Children of Bodom keyboards and synths. But past that, well, the things Tom does with his impassioned though growly vocals are pretty cool, and not only that, they’re serious, in a realm that is hard to take seriously: Power metal.

Yes, you may quibble and say no, this is progressive metal through and through, but Recreation Day rides that line too closely. But then again, ushering the near-impenetrable album away from both realms is the fact that Englund routinely comes up with melodies that either tug at the heartstrings with thespian melodrama or cast a doom pall over a music you thought you had pinned. The end result is a multi-dimensional record thick with musical events that, for some reason, I won’t be putting in the hours necessary to master and make automatic, the process that is necessary for fortuitous, productive communication between chunk of art and consumer thereof.
(1601 Banksville Rd. 2nd Fl. Pittsburgh, PA 15216)