Michael Pinnella - Ascension (2014)

How often you want listen prog metal just to hear for its keyboard parts? Yes, the one that has the coolest sound and shred fast as hell. Now, with this album by Michael Pinnela "Ascension", you got to listen to that one for the whole album.  Ascension is that mind blowing instrumental prog album, 100% build up from keyboard point of view. There are only one side of story here, the keyboard shred parts. There are ten tracks and for 52 minutes it is keyboards all the way. The line up notes state only Mike himself doing all of this. Even no guitarist was listed.

So, the whole album is pretty intense, pretty insane. This is the encyclopedia of progressive metal riffs and groves compiled into one album. From track one "New City Rising" up to "From Empty Places", they are all in same vibes, of fast and furious, complexes rhythm, shredding keys. "La Batalla En La Niebla" is kind of slowing down and has more melodic parts. Nice thing here is Michael Pinnella put a lot of grand piano sounds in here, to be pair with the synthesizer sounds. The one with dramatic orchestration can be heard in "Welcome Home". As well the classical wanna be tracks in "The Great Escape" and "The Ascension".

Nonetheless, the rest of album of course represented many of Symphony X elements. With almost all his member doing side projects, we can only hope they still got materials for their main band. Asension is truly keyboard-piano album that going to pleased prog fans for its mastery. My only lamentation is, there are no other artist join forces for this, one hell of guitarist will do. Last words, don't missed this.

Metal Harem class: ********** nine stars out of ten

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Michael Pinnella - Ascension (2014)

1. New City Rising (4:21)
2. Flip Side Of Things (4:20)
3. From Empty Places (6:17)
4. La Batalla En La Niebla (5:59)
5. Miswired (4:27)
6. A Weight Of The World (5:22)
7. Spiders Web (4:34)
8. Welcome Home (4:30)
9. The Great Escape (5:30)
10. The Ascension (7:09)

Michael Pinnella (Symphony X) - piano, keyboards, bass & drum programming

Releases information

Label: Knife Fight Media
Format: Digital
December 15, 2014