Well, again a band that uses as source of inspiration a kind of musical experimentalism. Yes, the Israeli quintet STORMY ATMOSPHERE is really creative, mixing influences from Prog Metal along with Symphonic Metal ones on their new album, "Pent Letters".
Yes, sometimes we could feel as DREAM THEATER and NIGHTWISH in their best moments were mixed in a great cauldron, putting some Progressive Rock, extreme Metal influences and some little touches of Pop music, and then STORMY ATMOSPHERE arose from the boiling mass. And it's very, very good. The technical level is high on the entire album, but is something that arises very spontaneously, isn't something the band was forced to do.
The sound quality is OK, being a bit more cleaner than heavy, but this is the correct balance their music needs to exist, due their technical level on each song. But don't be disturbed: there's a good amount of weight on their songs. And some invited musicians gave some contributions to their songs, as Shaked Furman (who played the drums on entire album), Tom Englund who sang on "The Manippeah" and Tom Gefen who made some additional vocals on "Gothic Dread".
Besides they have 15 songs on the album, two are little instrumentals ("The Way Home" and "While"), and the greater part of them during more or less five or six minutes, so the album is fascinating in some points. I dare to name "First Day" (with the fine guitars and very good male voices, along with great orchestrations from keyboards), the tender "First Year" (a very good work from male and female vocals), and from the giant song "Time" (14 minutes of a musical delirium made by great bass and drums work, along with good tempos changes. It's like watch something on a theater, full of different moments).
Very good album indeed, but I can see that the band really can do better than we hear here.