Heaven's Cry - Primal Power Addiction

Year of Release: 2002
Label: DVS Records
Catalog Number: DVS 007
Format: CD
Total Time: 48:12:00

Primal Power Addiction is the second album of the Canadian prog-metallers Heaven's Cry. Their debut album Food For Thought Substitute was released in 1997. It took the band five years to come up with a new album due to record label and management, but now they signed with DVS Records, a label that houses a number of excellent progressive bands. According to DVS the band kept their original style. Well, I have not heard the first album, but this one sounds quite good.

The first thing I noticed is that there is no keyboard player in the band. Too bad, because I think a progressive rock band should have keyboards ... but that is my opinion. Checking the lineup I found that Heaven's Cry compensates for the lack of keys with no less than three guitarists and they have two vocalists, which results in great vocal harmonies. The production of the album is good, but most of the songs are a bit standard and sometimes even a bit chaotic. The second half of the album contains the best songs, though. "Remembrance" is a sort of ballad, not the standard melody and great vocals. The song stands out between the dominating guitars and some quiet percussion accompany the drums. The percussion completely takes over on the song "The Inner Stream Remains," which also has acoustic guitars and again great vocals. These two songs are the jewels on the album and show these guys are good. As the rest of the album is filled with raw and crunchy progressive metal, the odd song is the last track on the album, which is a cover of the Midnight Oil protest song "Beds Are Burning." A strange choice maybe, but Heaven's Cry does it very good. The vocals sound very much like the singer of Midnight Oil and you finally get to hear the qualities of the bass player.

If you take some time to listen to the album, you'll find it is not bad, there are some good songs on it but they have more potential in them to grow and produce more balanced albums. Hopefully they will add keyboards to their sound, because I think that would make them more interesting to listen to. Still I say: give them a chance and listen to this album.

[This review originally appeared February 2003 at the ProgPower Online review site -ed.]
Tracklisting:
2k Awe Tick (4:45) / Masterdom's Profit (4:00) / A New Paradigm (3:42) / Divisions (5:01) A Higher Moral Ground (3:30) / Komma (5:07) / Remembrance (4:49) / One Of Twentyfour (5:35) / Waves (4:39) / The Inner Stream Remains (4:41) / Beds Are Burning (4:23) ?

Musicians:
Pierre St.Jean -guitars, vocals
Eric Jarrin - guitars
Olaf Quinzanos - guitars
Sylvain Auclair - bass, vocals
René Lacharité - drums

Discography:
Food For Thought Substitute (1997)
Primal Power Addiction (2002)

Genre: Progressive-Power Metal

Origin CA

Added: December 18th 2004
Reviewer: Marcel Haster
Score:
Artist website: www.heavenscry.com
Hits: 2197
Language: english