By Rob Kachluba
A New Beginning is the debut album by Creation’s End, a dark heavy crunchy prog/power band featuring the great Mike Dimeo (ex-Riot/Masterplan) on lead vocals. When you first hear this CD it is kind of weird hearing Mike sing in this style as I am used to hearing him sing more in a traditional hard rock style but after a few listens it seems to work just fine. The whole band are great musicians whom have played in and around the New York area with such bands as Zandelle, Circle to Circle and James Labrie. With all this talent it is refreshing to hear that they don’t really focus so much on the actual technical wizardry of the musicianship but on the writing of great dark, brooding melodic songs and, with this being their debut, I am happy to say they nailed it.
The guitar work and riffs up here are a plenty. “Hollow”, “Dissociate” and the raging “Relic” are played remarkably well. Guitairst Marco Sfogli (who has also played with James LaBrie) is the real deal here. The dark nature of some of the songs may be hard to get into for some but will be rewarded with multiple listens as there are some great accessible melodies. A lot of the songs are well over the six-minute mark but they never seem to get boring. There are plenty of tempo changes and moods and they never ever feel forced but very natural. No worries here for losing the listener. Neil Kernon handled the engineering on the album so it sounds fantastic. Everything can be heard clearly and it has that cold sound/vibe that Kernon is known for.
Do yourself a favor and grab this classy American prog/power release. In the over abundance and sea of new releases out there you will get hours of enjoyment out of this.
(Sensory)
Rating: 8 / 10
