Straight out of the gate this is a 3 song self titled CD EP by Mourningstar that clocks in at just over 25 minutes. The songs are obviously long and in-depth with lots of changes in the music which is a good thing. The music suffers from one main factor. The keyboards. Although the keyboardist changes the sound of his keys quite a lot (which usually I say is a good thing) in this case the keys constantly sound very old. Most of the time they remind me of the stuff Styx was doing with 'synthesizers' back in the late 70's/early 80's time period.
This doesn't fit with the heavy thrash metal being laid out. It's sort of like listening to a good thrash CD and watching an old episode of Buck Rodgers at the same time. Every thing else about this CD is really right on. The guitars are fast and technical with some amazing leads. The bass lines are nice. The vocalist has a supreme voice. They even pull off this really interesting jazz piece around the 7 minute mark of the first song. Drums are great, a nice mixture of time keeping, some double bass pieces, good fills and excellent use of cymbals. However over all this those keys come in on every song and for everyone I've let listen to this...literally ruin the song. They aren't used sparingly either, this is one of the main instruments in this band.
I hate to just bash on one part of the band but to be honest it is this one part that takes this excellent disc and makes it something that is just odd and not quite enjoyable.
4/10
