Canvas Solaris - Irradiance (2010)

Hailing from the USA today we have Progressive Metal wizards Canvas Solaris. “Irradiance” marks the band fifth full-length album, and a very impressive one we might add. For over 40 minutes we are taken through a brilliant exercise in execution and composition skills, “Irradiance” is one of the best Progressive Metal albums we have reviewed this 2010.

With their heavy influences from Cynic, Yes and Dream Theater, we can quickly notice why Canvas Solaris has been around for a while and are serious about making brilliant Progressive songs. The songwriting quality behind “Irradiance” is top notch and will immerse you into the band’s powerful sound.

The best thing for us is that there are no vocals in this release, most of the Dream Theater releases are ruined for us by the awful vocals of James LaBrie. Other Prog-Metal releases also suffer from the unnecessary singing that this genre seems to have, we advocate for Progressive Metal that has no vocals, allowing us to enjoy the music with no obstructions, and Canvas Solaris caters to our needs perfectly.

The guitar playing skills in “Irradiance” are top notch and mostly melodic in nature, there are some solos here and there that are perfectly used to enrich the overall experience, but never take any of the magic away from the group effort. The bass guitar is very solid and persistent during the course of the album.

The tempo changes provided by the intricate drumming are both magical and well designed to waltz through the songs adding complexity to the already brilliantly written music. We like that the drums are not over produced and sound just right, allowing everything else to flow perfectly.

Using trippy synthesizers the band creates a very well defined ‘out of this world’ experience, very similar to what Jordan Rudess does for DT. The overall production behind “Irradiance” is excellent and creates a very clean sound, just like any Progressive Metal/Rock release should sound. The only things we don’t like is the drone-like sounds used in the later tracks of this album, they feel a bit out of place, but not used excessively enough to make us dislike some of the songs.

Overall, Canvas Solaris has produced an excellent album with “Irradiance”, we can’t help but wonder why they aren’t more popular in the Progressive Metal/Rock scene. But we are sure that with this release things will change, so quickly go and buy this release before it’s too late.

Release: June 22nd, 2010

Country: USA