It's pompous. It's polished and perfect. The first instrumental solo is blistering, full of fleet fingering and hot bends – on keyboards. The kind that really want to be guitars. Yes, it's prog metal, and it shatters absolutely no stereotypes about the metal of choice for men with ponytails.
However, The Origins of Ruin's strength lies in its high metal content. Sure, the guitars often duke it out with the keyboards, which are admittedly quite fluent. But when the soaring vocals and the keyboards back off, the six-string work is shredding. It's obvious the guitarists have listened to their Priest, and "The Death of Faith and Reason" is suspiciously Nevermore-esque with its Lydian mode, chord changes, and melodies.
More importantly, Redemption knows how to write good songs – even if they each have at least 20 different parts. Of course, "I love Rush for the musicianship" odd meters are out in full force, but the performances feel energetic and unstudied. Some exuberant peaks recall early Dream Theater; dig those tasty drum rolls at the end of "The Suffocating Silence."
Perhaps the album runs long, but these melodies stick in one's head. This can be good or bad, especially when one finds oneself air-guitaring to the keyboards. InsideOut is the ruler of all things prog; this album would make a suitably metallic introduction to that world.
7.5/10
