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Mindwork: Eterea

Progressive Rock/Metal

4.5/5.0

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Unsigned / Self-released
by Craig Hartranft,  01.31.2013

Mindwork is a talented and promising three-man metal outfit from Prague in the Czech Republic. They offer their second disc, Eterea, a creative and entertaining mix of progressive rock and metal, even some jazz-rock fusion. However, as promising and creative Mindwork can be, Eterea comes with an disappointing, completely unnecessary, conundrum.

Mindwork:: not working.

Perhaps it's best to start at the end of the album with the concluding piece Eterea Collapse. This instrumental song, one of prog rock fusion, give you a sense of Mindwork's creative and technical ability. This same musical skill and compositional intrigue permeates most every song. Now returning to the start, passing over the short intro, we turn to Perceiving the Reality.

What rears it's ugly head? Growling dirty death vocals from vocalist and guitarist Martin Schuster. Thankfully, this is not extent of the vocal arrangements; Schuster mostly sings clean throughout (an exception would be Reaping of Waters which is entirely dirty vocals), and he's very good singer. Mindwork names Cynic as one of their many influences which could account for this practice. The dirty vocals pop up from time to time and do one thing: distract from the intelligent and entertaining music. Call it accent, if you will and, in the end, you'll get used to them, if only for the simple reason is that the music is quite good. Mind Renewal, Causality, Enthusiastic Waves, and Eterea Collapse are absolutely delightful, varying between enigmatic and intriguing, pieces of progressive music. Taken as a whole, yet excepting the dirty vocals, Eterea nears brilliance in progressive rock. Easily recommended.

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Taken as a whole, yet excepting the dirty vocals, Mindwork's Eterea nears brilliance in progressive rock. Easily recommended.

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