Creation’s End – A New Beginning (2010)

Coming from the minds of two North American musicians today we have “A New Beginning”, the debut full-length release of Creation’s End. Featuring musicians such as Mike Dimeo (Ex-Masterplan, Ex-Riot) and guitar wizard Marco Sfogli (James LaBrie band), this debut album will blow you away with its amazingly crafted Progressive Metal songs.

Creation’s End features a wide variety of influences, making them not just another Progressive Metal band, but a force to be reckoned since they touch so many genres in the 8 impressive tracks of “A New Beginning”. The band has something in store for everybody, being soaring vocals, guitar acrobatics, and a nice dark atmosphere surrounding the album.

Opening things up with “Of Shadow and Flame”, the band quickly establishes its superior songwriting skills with a very dramatic song that covers almost every single aspect of the band’s musical direction. The keyboard solos are very good and they work very nicely with the overall song structure and vocal layers. On “World Holocaust” we have a more direct Heavy Metal-esque song that is nicely outlined by keyboard wizardry and guitar solos. Most of the songs in this release feature very nice individual elements that make them standout from the rest.

The production of “A New Beginning” is crystal clear and allows all elements to shine very nicely. The combination of vocal arrangements, keyboards, and drum and bass guitar on “Hollow” is a very nice example of how well this release sounds, especially on a ‘big ass’ stereo system, this song also has the traditional sound of Power/Progressive Metal songs of all-star bands.

One of the very interesting things of Creation’s End is how well all musicians come together in crafting very good sounding (and elaborate) songs that keep listeners engaged. The keyboards are very helpful in creating parts of the atmosphere, but they never over shine the rest of the elements and outline some of them in a very effective manner. The guitar work is top notch, featuring very catchy solos and riffs, but they also never take the spotlight away from the group effort.

On songs like “Forsaken” and “Creation’s End”, the band shows the chops at writing epic songs that last over 10 minutes, but they never get dull or boring. The changes of moods and tempos in these songs are superb making them feel a lot less short than 10 minutes. All songs in this release flow very naturally and their arrangement in this album allows them to never get overbearing for the listener.

In general, Creation’s End is a very effective response from the USA to many of the European all-star bands that make music as rich as this. The band has only released one album (a very impressive one), but we can venture to say that they are still looking for their own sound and they will surely find it on their next releases. However, if you like elaborated experimental Progressive Metal, this album is just what the doctor ordered.

Release: November 9th, 2010

Country: USA