Subsignal – Beautiful & Monstrous

Subsignal emerged from the ashes after the german progressive metal band Sieges Even split up about a year ago.  On-board is lead vocalist from Sieges Evens last two albums (“Art of Navigating by the Stars” and “Paramount”), Arno Menses and the lead guitarist, Markus Steffens.  As I am a huge fan of those two album, this release was filled with both excitement and a bit of anxiousness. Will they try to do the same and fail? Will it be something entirely different? Awesome different or crappy different?

I’ve heard through it a number of times the last week and a half, and I can say that it is very much in the same direction as Paramount. Meaning that the music is mostly on the soft side (yet with plenty of contrasting harder parts), progressive and technical but without wankery. While some are probably disappointed that its not harder or more aggressive (“you call that metal!?”) and find the lead/backing vocal interaction a bit cheesy, it’s exactly what I loved about Sieges Even.  Hard to tell if I will come back to this album again and again as I do with Paramount and Art of Navigating by the Stars, but right here and now it’s perfect.

Youtube has plenty of songs from the album if you want to hear more, or you can just go buy it from their webshop.