Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

Pathosray is, well, an Italian metal band. Their self-titled CD is the band’s third release since forming in 2000 (with a subsequent name change). Points of reference would be Queensryche, Dream Theatre, and, interestingly enough, a bit of Emerson, Lake and Palmer. This type of bombastic rock is somewhat lost on me; I don’t feel like I need to slit my wrists or anything, but a little goes a long way. That having been said, Pathosray isn’t bad, not bad at all.

For those of you who care about such things, Pathosray is sung with English lyrics, though I can’t understand a lot of it anyway. The tracks follow a bit of a pattern --- solo instrumental for an introduction, then an operatic guitar and drum crescendo, then singing, repeat. It really isn’t boring, however, despite the repetition of form (I mean, all of rock is repetitive in one way or another), though the boys do tend to prattle on for a bit on each track. It’s what you would expect from an Italian metal band; they grow up listening to opera, we grow up listening to blues.

Each of the nine tracks on Pathosray is powerful, and the band is nothing if not technologically proficient. One comes away from listening to PATHOSRAY in one sitting feeling as if they’ve been subjected to an enjoyable pummeling (yes, for some of us, there is such a thing).  I may be wrong, but it seems to be a concept project --- titles like Faded Crystals, Scent of Snow, Sorrow Never Dies would seem to lend themselves to such --- so I would imagine that a Pathosray performance would be theatrical and exhausting, both in its witness and execution. While you’re probably going to have a favorite track somewhere on Pathosray --- mine, for whatever reason, are Scent Of Snow and Sorrow Never Dies, a nominal ballad --- there is something on each and every song to recommend itself to just about everyone. It’s just that given the length of each track --- average is about six minutes per --- it may take some time to find it.

The production values are extremely high on Pathosray and I have a feeling that as the band starts to break out of its European cocoon they are going to become extremely popular, though without terrestrial radio play --- the songs are too long for radio (and don‘t, at least to my ears, lend themselves to editing), and won’t fit into any format comfortably. You may not like everything on Pathosray, but everything is done well.