Let's start by mentioning that this is not the same PARAGON as the ones I reviewed in 2024 and early on in 2025. No, this is an American version from Springfield in Ohio. These guys only existed from 1987 until 1992/1993, of that no one is exactly sure. In those times they played pure Melodic Progressive US Metal. Apparently, they wanted to sound like some of the big US Progressive Metal bands. Alas, that never materialised, as they only were able to produce tow demos in their years of existence. Someone somewhere has found it necessary to combine the two demos and give them a chance to wow the world. The name that label Arkeyn Steel Records gave this compilation is the title of the first demo "Heed The Prophecy (Reissue)".

As for the PARAGON demos, they have been put on the album in reverse order. Which is a good choice, as the second demo "A Change Of Season" not only houses more songs, it is substantially the better one in sound and songs. But there is no escaping the fact that we are dealing with demo recordings. You can hear that the intros and outros that use acoustic guitars are recorded in different studios and with different settings than the electric music. As for the songs, they are nice, decent and do house a bit of quality that, if worked out in great detail, could have brought us very good releases musically. A good example is "Stand Alone", which would have not been out of place on any QUEENSRŸCHE album. but what is even more important, in Dwight Bowden the band had a very solid and good sounding singer. That makes such a difference when absorbing the meagre sounds of the "A Change Of Season" demo.

On the "Heed The Prophecy" demo the band opted to try and showcase how good musicians they are. That is a very dangerous thing to do on a debut demo. It makes PARAGON sound like a bunch of loners that just hap[pen to play in the same band. Especially bassist Steve Smith is responsible for a lot of freaky moments that don't serve any purpose. It therefore renders PARAGON into a band without direction, just there to try and impress, what doesn't help is that the sound is even more oversteered in these recordings. I'm afraid that the singer wasn't able to rescue any quality back to normality. So, those last four songs on the album are a bit of a waste of space, if you ask me.