From Krakow, Poland comes SADMAN'S INSTITUTE and their 2015 offering, "Revival"; an authentic gift to those who love progressive metal blended with a heavy contemporary flair. Think COHEED & CAMBRIA meets FATE'S WARNING meets the heavy riffs of WHILE HEAVEN WEPT with a bit of METALLICA thrown in for good measure. The world that is SADMAN'S INSTITUTE is an out of this world journey to a place where thoughts of a far off planet produce strange dreams that become a reality.

Take the track "Ash and Dust" for example. Here is a mind-bending, color-inducing track that showcases a melodic arrangement that twists and turns around guitars and drums. The acoustic of this opening track blends nicely with the electric and the mid track guitar solo is quite impressive. The using of every note that the neck of the guitar has to offer makes for some truly remarkable, and memorable work. Some tracks are heavy - real heavy (the nightmarish "F.T.") that from the opening bars pound their way into the mind of the listener firmly committed to rocking that listener down to his very soul, while others gently lay out a blanket of comforting guitars. The songs are ominous, and tantalizingly haunting with heavy uses of reverb, and without warning do various tempo and chord changes. But what has to be added is they are impressive, and linger with the listener even after the song fades away.

Pealing back the layers of these songs and listening to it's how each note makes for a completed tune, shows a collection of tracks that says a lot for the songwriters. For when told its most honest way, here is a band that has succeeded in what is a seemingly implausible effort. Progressive metal (along with symphonic metal) is one of the hardest genres to bring to life. With little use of keyboards, it is the guitar work of SADMAN'S INSTITUTE that showcases the progressive side of this band. While some of the most progressive metal bands heavily rely on keyboards (SPOCK'S BEARD, SAVATAGE, SHADDOW GALLERY) to bring out the progressive, that fact that SADMAN'S INSTITUTE has used the guitars of Tomasz Gurgul and Paweł Szczepański to bring out the progressive really speaks volumes for this band's affinity to stay within the genre that they have brought to life.

Around for almost a decade, and struggling with lineup changes, SADMAN'S INSTITUTE has released a pretty good CD here. Listen to the ripping "Take It All," the beautiful "Sacrifice," the 9-minute completely COHEED & CAMBRIA sounding, "Trapped Between," and the guttural vocals of "Rotten Home."

Good stuff here. Time will tell if this CD will propel this band into the forefront, but with as lame as American radio is at helping support bands like this, we'll have to see. But be that as it may, when a band releases a CD as good as the one heard here, it certainly couldn't hurt.