The Americans of SHADOW GALLERY are one of these rare bands, because also the third album "Tyranny" does not stand back to the ingenious previous albums "Shadow Gallery" and "Carved In Stone", in no way at all! In almost 74 minutes they present us with finest Progressive Metal, which leaves absolutely nothing to be desired, be it progressiveness, heaviness or catchiness.

As on the first two albums the sextet combines highest musical class and skills with almost unbelievable accessibility. Opener "War For Sale" (after the intro "Stiletto In The Sand") is surprising hefty, crunching guitars, superb melodies, brilliant vocals and typical choir, SAVATAGE in their absolute heyday could not have made it any better (while I prefer Mike Baker over Jon Oliva any time!), but that by far is not everything that SHADOW GALLERY have to offer on their third album. Songs like the equally great "I Believe" and "New World Order" (both more then eight minutes long) or the measured "Christmas Day" are further highlights of a very homogenous and compact album.

Once more SHADOW GALLERY present themselves as a union, as band, not as a bunch of extremely skilled single musicians, which use the songs to showcase themselves. SHADOW GALLERY are progressive without being progressive in the sense of being breaky or most complicated rhythm-changes that only a graduated music-scientist still can dissect, also a "normal Metalian" has lots of chances to find his way into the songs.

But what am I still writing, the third Progressive Metal-classic of SHADOW GALLERY in a row, who likes this style, has to have "Tyranny", over and out!