Ashes - Arcane

The first release from Australian prog metal band Arcane was originally going to be an extended E.P. consisting entirely of their twenty-four minute epic 'Ashes,' until the order came to bulk it out to a longer release. Does that necessarily mean that the other four songs on here are of a lower standard and tantamount to filler? It's difficult to tell, as the style is fairly blandly consistent throughout; for a progressive band, there isn't an awful lot of experimentation here. Progressive metal is quite a broad-reaching term that encompasses bands as diverse as Shadow Gallery and Atheist, but the style here flows more along the lines of the pleasant, heavily ...  Read the complete review