To me, Progressive Metal is a genre that I highly enjoy. However, it's quite rare to find a band from that genre that I genuinely love. This is probably because there are so many ways that bands can ruin such a broadly-defined genre, such over-reliance on one aspect of the genre (over-indulgence, out-of-place odd time signatures, etc.). For every great band like VANDEN PLAS or SHADOW GALLERY, there are three bands that give the genre a bad name through the faults described above (these bands can be faulted for the general distaste for the genre here at Metal Temple, methinks). Then we have bands like KNIGHT AREA, but before I get into that, a little background first.

KNIGHT AREA was formed in The Netherlands in 2002. This is their third album. They claim to be influenced as much by 70's Prog Rock as they are heavier bands.

Now that that's out of the way, it's obvious that KNIGHT AREA's music is written by the keyboardist. The keys play the most prominent role in the music. They claim to play Progressive Metal, but really a lot of this sounds like neo-Prog lite, for lack of a better term. I say this because the music is not very heavy and is relatively straightforward. This is not necessarily a bad thing, although the music itself is very happy sounding and upbeat. Again, not a bad thing; AMORPHIS can be the same way at times and I love their music. The main problem is that nothing on this album really moved me. There's nothing on here that is bad or cheesy per se, but there is not anything that would differentiate from the other bands that are playing something similar.

I guess the gage for how essential this is is determined by how deep the listener's desire for progressive/melodic Rock (this is pretty far from Metal) runs. Personally, I will probably never listen to this again, not because it's bad, but because it doesn't offer anything that I couldn't find superiorly written and performed by other bands. For those who have less of a problem with the negatives described for this album, perhaps this would be more suited for you.