SHADOWDANCE's second full-length record, "Future Negative Fantasy", is dark, aggressive, and moody, mixing a variety of styles of playing in addition to having a super heavy overall vibe. The band's unique sound and convincing performance make for a great listen.

The album's first track, "Neon Abyss" is a pounding mid-tempo tour-de-force, combining extremely catchy melodies and hooks with some very technical, very thrashy riffs. It highlights everything SHADOWDANCE does well in one song. "Branded", the second track, speeds things up a good bit and largely continues this trend, with still more creative riffing amongst dark ambient effects... Guitarist and founder Carlos Alvarez's classy, multifaceted playing keeps things interesting at all times, with both his melody-sensitive lead playing and his crushing, technical rhythm style giving full form to SHADOWDANCE's inspired, thoughtful, and multilayered compositions. "Future Negative Fantasy" embraces inspirations from classic Thrash, Power, and Progressive metal while keeping a fresh, modern perspective. In short, it's a really pissed-off record that puts a lot of emphasis on riffs, melody, speed, and aggression. Every solo section is as musically memorable as they are technically proficient.

Vocalist George Eliassen's performance is also impressive. His confident, powerful vocals provide for a number of impressive moments, especially on "Neon Abyss", "All or Nothing", and "Moonlight Tides". Sometimes, though, he can come off as overly dramatic in his delivery. This is evident on "Stare at the Sun" and the otherwise superb "Balance", but otherwise Eliassen's vocals serve the music very well. The drumming of Jay Horvath and Jason Fraticelli is extremely technical and rhythm conscious, combining with the guitars to make the album noticeably hard edged and visceral throughout. "All or Nothing" is of particular note, an absolutely crushing combination of pure rage and fret-board gymnastics. One of my few complaints about the album is about the relative repetitiveness of its lyrical content, primarily all laments about love, loss and regret. You could argue that these kind of personal lyrics help add to the emotional weight of the songs; however, you could also argue that the music sometimes comes off as cheesy for the same reason. There is no denying, however, the heaviness of the music as a whole. "Suspension" another highlight, is crushingly heavy and uncompromising from beginning to end, as is the multilayered title track, which closes the album out in convincingly heavy fashion before descending from thrashing to a soft outro melody. The ambient and keyboard parts add subtly to each song, and, most importantly, never distract from the rest of the instruments. There is very little throwaway material to be found at all, a testament to the band's strong composition skills.

"Future Negative Fantasy" is a winner across the board, an overall strong record that should earn SHADOWDANCE a good deal of respect. It is memorable, fast and heavy, one of the better Metal records I have listened to in a long time, and one that has everything that I enjoy about Metal at one point or another. I would highly recommend it to anyone who loves good, fast, aggressive Metal.