Tangent Plane – Project Elimi (2011)

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Hailing from Germany today we have Tangent Plane and their undercooked second full-length release “Project Elimi”. The band plays Progressive Heavy Metal with some nice elements, but with an overall dullness that will put you to sleep after a couple of songs.

We usually don’t go around trashing bands, but this album feels like it needed more time to fully develop into a better one. The band’s musical abilities are very good, but they lack creativity and emotions behind the 8 songs presented in this release.

The album kicks off with “One Month In Real Time”, and while this track had some promise in the first two minutes, it quickly drowns into mediocrity and formulaic music. Generic keyboards, simple and repetitive riffs, and a very predictable structure kill the song and the great efforts of vocalist Jan Michaelis, the overall highlight of the album.

Most of the songs proceed in the fashion of drunken half-erections. Even the aptly titled “Borrow Me Your Dullness” is very dull indeed (btw, we assume the band meant “Lend Me Your Dullness”, a common mistake made by German speaking people when referring to lending something. Here we get the prefect example of drumming that goes nowhere, guitar riffs that blend in the background and an active bass line that gets lost in translation.

The band does have good chops in making nice Progressive sections that quickly fade out into randomness. Maybe the album is just too disconnected and this is the objective of the band, but listening to it as a whole kills any flow and any desire to keep listening.

The only song we 80% liked was “Deadborn”. In this song Jan delivers an excellent vocal performance and you can hear the soul behind his vocal melodies. The music is somewhat cohesive (for the most part) and creates a very nice melodic atmosphere. The rest of the songs are just bits and pieces of creativity thrown together randomly. Even the overly ambitious 22 minute album title track falls short due to its disconnectedness.

As we stated, the band is not bad at all, it is just their lack of cohesive songwriting and sticking to something from beginning till the end. There are too many ideas here and there that lead to nowhere and kill the flow of the tracks. Hopefully in the future the band focuses more in creating songs rather than creating bits of brilliance.

Band: Tangent Plane Album: Project Elimi
Label: 7hard records

Release: March 25th, 2011

Official Site myspace
Genre: Progressive Heavy Metal

Country: Germany

Rating: 65/100
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