Untitled Document
Formed in France in 1996 by Bruno Levesque, Silence released two albums
prior to Utopia. With this new opus, Bruno teams up vocalist Jerome Cazard
to create a refreshing new album that is hard, if not impossible to categorize.
Silence fuses AOR, hard rock, and melodic metal with progressive overtones to
create a unique musical experience. While listening to this CD, you will think
of bands like Stratovarius and even Dream Theater at times, but
at other times, bands like Ted Poley’s Melodica come to mind.
Bruno shows the many faces of his musical abilities with this album. First
off, the songwriting is superb. The thick and ever present keyboard work provides
an enchanting atmosphere throughout while it also sets up the huge hooks in
dramatic fashion. Tracks such as A New Freedom and Why Not Today
run the gamut from prog rock to AOR, and even power metal. For example, A
New Freedom boasts a dramatic, progressive song structure complete with
AOR hooks and a tempo change in the middle of the song that features pummeling
double bass and a brief power metal guitar riff. Why Not Today contains
a soaring power metal type chorus, but the song actually begins with a very
calm AOR-like keyboard into and maintains a progressive feel throughout with
the extensive keyboard textures. Against The Wind and Strange Sounds
have a darker feel than the rest of the album, and this mood is accentuated
perfectly with the keyboards. Strange Sounds evolves into a soaring power
metal like cut despite it dark, ominous intro. The title track reminds of big
stadium hard rock acts such as Tyketto with its acoustic guitar in the
background, huge hook, and excellent keyboard work. The extensive, yet dynamic
use of keyboards throughout create a unique atmosphere as well as serving as
a dramatic build up to the many huge hooks on this album. The listener is also
treated to a feast Bruno’s guitar solos and riffing to match perfectly the mood
of each particular song. We have the angry and moody riff work in tracks like
Against the Wind as well as the power metal type riff work in tracks
like A New Freedom and Why Not Today. There are also some slow
and dark, almost Sabbath like riffs in the final track, Consolation.
Bruno’s ability to shred on the guitar are outstanding just like his songwriting
abilities.
If you are a fan of AOR, melodic hard rock, power metal, and prog, I highly
recommend you check this album out. Silence certainly blurs the genre
borders with its meshing of the aforementioned styles to provide a refreshing
sound all their own. Fans of one type of music, and that type only (power, prog,
AOR, or hard rock) might want to listen to this release before buying as it
certainly cannot be categorized into a specific genre.