Lost in Time: Pagan’s Mind – Celestial Entrance

Style: Progressive metal, power metal (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Symphony X, Stratovarius, Queensryche, Dream Theater
Country: Norway
Release date: 18 November 2002

When it comes to communities as niche and underground as progressive metal, everyone has their “core memory” albums that shaped their tastes going forward and symbolize the transition from a casual fan to an obsessed hobbyist. Sure, I had spent a fair amount of time with Rush and then Dream Theater in high school, but for me Pagan’s Mind’s Celestial Entrance is the core memory progressive power metal album, remaining to this day a cornerstone, representing my gold standard of progressive power metal.

Taking bands like Symphony X and Conception as influences and teaming up with cheesy space fantasy inspired by Stargate, Celestial Entrance is not a masterpiece in groundbreaking originality or the avant-garde but unequivocally stands as a masterpiece of early 2000s power/prog execution. An evolution and overall improvement in virtually every facet from their 2000 debut, Infinity Divine, you can expect to find standard features of progressive power metal: guitar and synthesizer pyrotechnics, huge choruses delivered in a high register, and lopsided rhythms, all played at a satisfyingly diverse range of speeds and moods across its runtime.

What really separates Celestial Entrance from its peers, though, is its conviction: Pagan’s Mind fully sell the space fantasy theme in a way that is convincing, unafraid to have fun while doing it. Space-themed media can easily come across as sterile and impersonal, but through its delivery, Celestial Entrance ends up as an immersive piece that puts you as the protagonist of a grand galactic journey. The album is infectious in its fun and excitability: by the opening power chords of “Through Osiris’ Eyes,” I’m jumping around my room air guitaring and drumming as if it’s the first time I’m hearing it, and when the first verses of “Dreamscape Lucidity” come in, I’m belting the lyrics at the top of my lungs. It’s impossible to not have a blast when listening to this album.

Another boon of this album is the variety of songs: though they all stick to a similar sound, Pagan’s Mind manage to construct tracks varied in themes, ideas, and tempos. “Entrance: Stargate” and “Dimensions of Fire” gently glide across the night sky as an aurora borealis pulsates above and constellations glow down warmly on the listener; “Dreamscape Lucidity” and “Aegean Shores” are intense and triumphant adventures through mystical planes of existence; and the instrumental “Back to the Magic of Childhood” is a playful planetary exploration of a distant solar system.

All the elements that make this album great come together on the closer, “The Prophecy of Pleiades.” Controversial for aping elements from Dream Theater’s “Learning to Live,” “Prophecy” explores a range of moods and intensities, beginning with gentle atmospherics giving way to a slow guitar solo that builds into heavy chugs, like watching a meteorite that turns out to be a spaceship descending to the ground, creating a powerful gust as it gently lands. From there, it settles into a spacious instrumental section, giving the song room to breathe and giving the bass a moment to shine as it leads the song through a starry spruce forest. The guitars explode with energy before the simple and catchy chorus and pick up some tempo during the solo with lightning-fast guitar work giving into guitar-keyboard interplay where the guitar and keyboard playfully skate from star to star. The track concludes by returning to the slower tempos from the beginning and sending off the album with one last dramatic chorus, proving itself to be a masterclass of cheesy atmospheric progressive power metal.

Our Benevolent Subway Overlords™ sanction me only a few hundred words per review, so I’ll leave you with this: every moment contributes to the adventurous grandeur of Celestial Entrance, and is just as worthy of attention now as it was 22 years ago. As a 15 year old, I was completely won over by this album and almost 15 years later, I still love it just as much. I can’t effuse enough the amount of fun I have with this album, how it shaped my taste as a young fan of progressive metal, and how much joy this mountain of Moon Cheese has brought me.

Recommended tracks: Dreamscape Lucidity, Approaching/Through Osiris’ Eyes, The Prophecy of Pleiades, The Seven Sacred Promises
You may also like: Conception, Anubis Gate, Eidolon, Vanden Plas

Related links: Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Metal-Archives page

Label: Steamhammer – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Pagan’s Mind is:
– Nils K. Rue (vocals)
– Jørn Viggo Lofstad (guitars)
– Ronny Tegner (keyboards)
– Stian Kristoffersen (drums)
– Steinar Krokmo (bass)