Time Signature Mastermind...

Genre: progressive power metal

The fourth installment in Lion Music's ongoing reissue series of Consortium Project's back catalog, "Children of Tomorrow" was originally released in 2007, but will see the light of day once again in March this year.

On the previous album, "Terra Incognita (The Undiscovered World)" Ian Parry seemed to have found the sound for his Consortium Project, drawing on the groove and heaviness of the rather forgettable debut album and the much better sophomore effort "Continuum in Extremis" and adding a symphonic and progressive touch.

"Children of Tomorrow" pretty much continues down the same road as on "Terra Incognita (The Undiscovered World)", initiating the album with a symphonic and epic intro which even features a wee spoken narrative. The opening riff of the starter, is a heavy and groovy riff, and the track has a quite dark atmosphere overall - and this atmosphere is ubiquitous throughout the entire album. An interesting feature is the use of oriental-ish moods like in the epic-sounding 'Nowhere Fast' and the groovy 'Exodus', while tracks like 'Shadows' and 'Made in Heaven' features some retro prog rock-like spacey keyboards, and 'Enigma' and 'Mastermind' are uptempo and aggressive.

In keeping with the tradition of power metal which the sound of Consortium Project has always been anchored in, the choruses on this album are big and epic, but, interestingly, not as catchy as on the predecessor. Still, they go well together with the overall epic feel.

Fans of dark progressive power metal should definitely check out this central opus in the corpus of Ian Parry's work.