Shadow Gallery
"Legacy"
Magna Carta
By Vinnie Apicella Lush, luxurious and quite unusual inasmuch as we usually don't expect to see a "part II' as the opening track to an album. Shadow Gallery's "Clliffhanger 2" begins things-and actually draws to a close some thirteen minutes later while in between a wealth of progressive instrumental arrangements and chordal intricacies wither in and around the listening consciousness. To the virgin listener, "Cliffhanger 2" picks up an incomplete story from six years earlier and their "Carved In Stone" sophomore release. While the term "Progressive" is to an extent redundant taken its literal extremes, Shadow Gallery plays with a vision toward the future while currently employing avant-garde nuances and new age tactics in a gracefully textured outpouring of Metal rhythms and wondrous melodies. Interesting to read the band bio and discover a statement that Shadow Gallery, progressive technicians though they are, behold a uniqueness that one is hard pressed to recall within the quickly growing ranks-true enough, while many a progressive band/artist often draws on the same musical strengths and towering song structures that the genre is built upon, Shadow Gallery, employing the typically tried and true measures often come through independently-from out of the "shadows" in some odd way, fascinating, sometimes frenzied in their delivery, but usually all their own. What stands out for me with "Legacy" is that the songs, while tempered in never even the slightest manner, seem to approach the song more as a whole without the confusing aspects of the overdone technical splicing that often interferes. This is no way suggests the six players that form Shadow Gallery are inferior songwriters or undedicated to their craft, to the contrary, the skillful playing is ever present but with a more listenability and less virtuosic ramblings-picture Kansas-like vocal harmonies, Rush-like motives, Savatage-like storytelling, all presented with a slightly dark yet wise B.O.C.-like undercurrent with a full bore electric ensemble that raises the magnitude and open chord oscillation to level ten and beyond.
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