I must admit, this is literally the first time I have heard a Metal (or any genre) band hailing from Russia. STARSOUP's debut album "Bazaar Of Wonders" is an adventurous piece that combines spacey Prog Rock with AOR grooves, and technical Prog Metal flourishes, and ends up as an incredibly dynamic album, exemplifying great musicianship. What originally drew me to the album was the fact I could barely compare it to anything, save for the odd ADAGIO and ANGRA-like arrangements; what can make a progressive metal album truly great, is when you are unable to compare it to anything.

Opening track "Angels" is a through-and-through Prog Metal track, with groovy, yet technical and masterful riffs that throws back interplays with a contrastingly beautiful piano melody. Even more polarized are the vocals; Alexey no doubt has a strong voice; melodic when he wants to be, but primarily and aggressive and powerful vocal style, much like Mats Leven. Is this a bad thing? Not at all; it's quite a surprise to switch out what is normally melodic and soaring vocals for a more aggressive touch in a Progressive Metal track. "Ain't no Superman" was easily one of my favorite tracks on the album, because it combines everything I enjoy in a Prog track; touches of heavy riffing, utterly infectious vocal melodies and chord progressions, and trippy rhythmic arrangements. Normally I would never like some AOR in my Prog, but this track is simply ear-food; I don't even care how cheesy the lyrics might appear to be. "Past Bites", however, is much more of a straight-forward hard rock track and is over 3 minutes of solid guitar groove, and sounds completely unlike the rest of the first half of the album.

"Bazaar", as the name suggests, contains many Middle Eastern-like sounds, predominantly crafted with keyboards and samples, and crafty use of particular melodic scales. Entirely instrumental, the track is diverse enough in arrangements and is forever changing. I must stress the skillful wailing on the lead guitar performed by Ilya, often contrasting by soloist bass fills. Naturally, I am instantly reminded of something from MYRATH. Just when I thought I had heard it all, I was further bamboozled upon listening to "Road to Sunset", when I was treated to a guitar and saxophone duet. It's very easy to think of this track initially as a commercial selling point, but there are just enough spacey, progressive flourishes to think about. For the 11^th time now, I find yet another song that is completely different to anything previous; "Perfect Loser" feels very hard to classify. It's filled to the brim with groovy and catchy synth tracking, and the majority of the music sounds like a mix of FATES WARNING and DREAM THEATRE, with an extra special dash of AOR, but layered with vocals that sound almost completely unlike anything performed already, taking a much deeper, and more guttural approach. Not to mention, some gorgeous slapped bass.

STARSOUP were a very intriguing band to listen to; I enjoyed each of the tracks individually, but alas, I confess, I had no real idea how they were supposed to fit together as an album, least not the ones that strayed far from the Progressive Metal I was expecting. Then again, what could I be expecting? If a band sets out to create progressive metal to implore the listener to think, then they are probably damned good at what they do.