Style: Traditional progressive metal (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Dream Theater, Mike Portnoy, 90s prog metal (i.e. Dream Theater)
Country: Illinois, United States
Release date: 20 July 2020
[EDITOR’S NOTE: This review was originally published in the July 2020 (Part Two) issue of The Progressive Subway.]
For the first time in a very long time we were actually short on albums for July. Even with all of Jonah’s sources we came up short, so I went for a last resort: searching non-prog metal genres for mistagged prog metal albums, or those related to the genre (eg something like 00s Iron Maiden). Searching for “heavy metal” for this on metal-archives is easy as you can filter out 90% of the releases on song length alone. This release by Guardsman is the product of that search, as it was easy to identify that this was actually a mistagged prog metal release, and a good one at that!
Frankly this release is so prog, that I wonder where the “heavy metal” tag came from in the first place. In the first three songs some of the riffs could be considered heavy metal riffs, but other than that there’s barely anything. Almost none of the riffs, guitar harmonies or drumming of heavy metal is present on this album. And the vocals are about as heavy metal as later Ray Alder’s are (which is to say, not a whole lot). For the prog however there’s a lot to go on: softer passages, odd time signatures, overblown drumming and most of all: it’s a concept album. The Entropy Illusion, Pt. II was originally supposed to be one song, but for streaming reasons they cut it into six parts.
It’s strange. Compared to the wider prog metal world I wouldn’t consider the technical performances spectacular by any means, but still they managed to make this album very enjoyable to listen to. Clearly they’ve got talent for arrangement and melody. You can literally pick any point in the record and there’s something to grab your attention. It also flows superbly, so you’re almost immediately absorbed in the record. For how much they worship Dream Theater on this album, it’s impressive how much they still have a sound of their own. For example their drummer is so inspired by Mike Portnoy that despite literally copying the dude for at least half the record, he actually outperforms most of Mike’s output of the last 10 years or so on energy alone. Heck, he even does his own “Finally Free” impression on “Chapter VI” as he goes completely ham with the fills. His energy radiates throughout the album, spicing up literally everything. It’s so derivative, but so much fun to listen to.
I have a hard time grading this record. All my “objective” rationale says this shouldn’t be graded very high (too derivative, average performances, cheesy, etc.), but the truth is that I just had a very good time listening to this record. This album is damn fun, and no one can tell me otherwise.
Recommended tracks: Washed Away, Visions
You may also like: Hac San, Dark Quarterer, Course of Fate
Final verdict: 7/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page
Label: Independent
Guardsman is:
– Steve Harwood (vocals, guitars)
– Morty Harwood (keyboards)
– Greg Bauman (bass)
– Rob Harwood (drums)
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