TANGENT PLANE is a progressive metal band. The music is definitely progressive, which sometimes means to me "pompous". I have never been a big fan of people breaking their arms by trying to pat themselves on the back. First things first, the singer is terrible. He sticks out like a sore thumb and that is not a good thing. He sings out of key and is very distracting. With all the varied time signatures and varying musical scales, there needs to be something cohesive to keep it all together. Most of the time that task falls on the vocalist. It is a shame to say that they have failed in this regard. I would try to bury this guy in the mix if I was the producer, because he is far too upfront in the mix to me.Β Also, the music is too all over the place. The drums are stuttering without any pattern in too many instances. Also, many songs have tempo changes for no reason other than to stand out. It's ok to stand out, but you should be capable of doing so in a positive manner before attempting to do so. I don't like the fact that you can listen to a song on this album at the one minute mark, then skip ahead listen to it at the two minute mark and on and on according to how long the song is, until it stops, and not be able to tell it's the same song. This is annoying to no end.

The band does make a noticeable attempt to make their music epic, and sometimes it works. You have layered keyboards and good choruses here and there, but not enough to elevate the band to the point where the music is worth repeated listening. Β Another gripe is the fact that too many of the songs are way too long. It is hard enough to sit through five minutes of this band's songs, let alone nine, ten and at one point even twenty two minutes.Β I have never been able for the life of me to understand the point of writing a song that is over twenty minutes long. In my opinion, the only time that has ever worked, is in the compositions of classical music by the long dead Maestro's like Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart,andTchaikovsky, etc. The songs from those great composers can last an extremely a long time and still be tolerable, but I hate to tell TANGENT PLANE something, they are not Beethoven, so going on forever is a annoyance, not a blessing.

In the end, this album seems to me to be self indulgent pomposity with not enough quality or substance to back it up. Sometimes the music slows down to such an excruciatingly slow tempo that you want to cover your ears or toss the CD out the window. When it speeds up the singer chimes in and dashes any hope you had of the band redeeming themselves. I simply cannot recommend this album with a clear conscience. This music is just too tortuous to sit through more than once.