WIZARDTHRONE is a new project featuring members of various bands including Christopher Bowes, lead vocalist of ALESTORM and Michael Barber, guitarist from GLORYHAMMER, among others.  As such, their debut, "Hypercube Necrodimensions" was just released via Napalm Records.  A different direction than their main bands, WIZARDTHRONE plays a keyboard-heavy form of Melodic Death Metal.

It seems every genre of Metal has been hybridized in some shape or fashion.  WIZARDTHRONE is yet another example of this phenomenon for theirs is a sound that includes multiple elements including Prog and Thrash among the aforementioned.  With such a pronounced keyboard stance, specifically a Symphonic focus, though, the effect of the heaviness is lost along the way.  The caliber of musicianship does somewhat help to make up for that diminishing aggression.

Perhaps it is best to just come right out with it.  When the album first started with "Black Hole Quantum Thermodynamics," I thought I was listening to a lost CHILDREN OF BODOM track.  Anyone familiar with their debut will easily get a feel for this album.  That manic, note-filled onslaught with huge orchestration is treated to a reworking and the vocals are quite reminiscent of Alexi Laiho.

By the time the fourth track, "Forbidden Equations Deep Within the Epimethean Wasteland" arrives, one gets the feeling like these first few tracks have all bled into one song.  The music just has this rambling nature where it is full speed ahead, transition after transition, until one barely notices the transitions anymore.  At this point, my head is practically pounding from all the orchestra hits.  It can be unrelenting.

Another band from the late '90s that WIZARDTHRONE conjures is COVENANT, at least their second album, "Nexus Polaris".  Undoubtedly, had WIZARDTHRONE debuted two decades ago, they would have been signed to Nuclear Blast.  "The Coalescence of Nine Stars in the System Once Known as Markarian-231," the fifth track, introduces a new thread into this already well-woven yarn, Power Metal.  The latter half of the song goes into sing-along territory, and I find myself further scratching my head when the sixth track, "Of Tesseractual Gateways in the Grand Duplicity of Xhul," begins with the most intense riff of the album.

The bottom line is that underneath all of the above gripes I listed, I want to like WIZARDTHRONE.  At times, I do.  The production is certainly outstanding, and the song titles are intriguing with an almost-ARCTURUS vibe.  What is causing the album the most difficulty in impressing my ears is that though filled with myriad transitions, the music follows a pattern mimicking too many other moments in Metal and stumbles trying to find its own identity.  As previously stated, the level of musicianship is extremely high, but the songs simply fail to leave a lasting impression.  At the end of the day, music is always subjective.