Valarius
This is a good album by Derek Sherinian, but unfortunately it nowhere near lives up to what it could have been. The problem with this album is that it is basically one of the world’s most flamboyant keyboard players taking a backseat and providing backing keyboards to a guitar shred-fest
Now, as a fan of heavy music, and as a guitar player myself, I'm a big fan of shred music. Unfortunately, a lot of the solos here are provided by Yngwie Malmsteen. Though I have no problem with Malmsteen, and can listen to a lot of his solo records, his contributions to this album (solo-wise anyway) are very stale and uninspired, and all sound the same.
Thankfully, there is a positive counter to the rather dull solos, and that is the incredible riffing that's going on. Some of these songs have such amazing riffs that it makes up for the lack of interesting solos. ‘The Sons of Anu’ is an incredibly heavy song with some great, exotic sounding melodies in it. ‘Axis of Evil’ and ‘Starcycle’ have some great metal riffing going on, and the title track, ‘Black Utopia’, is a great head banging anthem.
Overall this isn't a terrible album, it's just not brilliant either. It has its great moments and it's totally forgettable ones. If you like Progressive Metal then there's some stuff on here that'll put a smile on your face, and there are plenty of guest appearances to keep things interesting. Good, but non-essential.