If RUSH or DREAM THEATER had completely lost their minds, and collaborated with FAITH NO MORE or DIMMU BORGIR, they would probably sound something similar to LOREWEAVER. They're a progressive metal band from Italy with an exceptionally talented drummer (Claudio Cavalli) and front woman (Barbara Rubin). The band compiles music that is, all at once, a mixture of power metal, symphonic/gothic metal, and melodic metalcore.

Lorenzo Marcenaro, keyboardist for LOREWEAVER, gets away with playing all kinds of symphonic and movie score-worthy keyboard parts that are fascinating and moving when isolated from the rest of the music on "Italic". Listening to Marcenaro's work brings me back to a lot of SIGH's more recent work in how the keyboard is the instrument in the foreground of the musical arrangement. The guitars, bass and drums are never absent but the music seems to center its more experimental movements on what the keyboards are playing.

Sometimes the level of musicianship from LOREWEAVER gets in the way of the listenability. The guitar chugs on "Angry Tears" really take away any refinement that gets placed in the way by the keyboard ballads. A lot of the music devolves into a power/hair metal force, which is an immediate turn off for music fans like me. If the music is progressive then that should mean that the music is heading forward instead of backwards. What is the point of making music that was only popular thirty years ago?

The song "My Freedom", which clocks in at over eleven minutes in length, is actually about five minutes too long. In fact, the atmospheric track "The River Suite", which is nearly sixteen minutes long, LOREWEAVER is literally killing me over here. I nearly drifted off to sleep during its intro. Not only is this music cheesy and theatrical, it is music that is way past its expiration date. This kind of music cannot fly in the Twenty-first Century.

With no real excuse for this kind of music, I hereby condemn this album with a light four out of ten. I thought that this music could've been impressive, even groundbreaking, in the early to mid-1990s. But where we as a global culture stand right now, this is music that I think even fans of DREAM THEATER'S early stuff would feel confused and insecure about. I would only recommend this album to hardcore progressive power metal fans only. Everyone else should steer clear of "Italic".<