Next To None - A Light In The Dark

Published July 02 2015

*=Staff's pick	The Edge Of Sanity* You Are Not Me* Runaway A Lonely Walk Control Lost Social Anxiety* Legacy Blood On My Hands*

Genre	Progressive Heavy Metal	Thomas Cuce	Vocals
Tracks	9	Ryland Holland	Guitar
Running time	57 Min.	-	Guitar
Label	InsideOut Music	Kris Rank	Bass
Release	June 29, 2015	Max Portnoy	Drums
Country	USA	Thomas Cuce	Keyboard
Producer	Mike Portnoy
Similar artists	Dream Theater

It's pretty obvious when you take in consideration that Mike Portnoy and his son Max are involved with this album, because Next To None, on various moments in its music, kind of sounds like a young and fresh installment of Dream Theater. Not like the latter were like 25 years ago, but more as they are closer to today, but with an apparently youthful approach to it and undoubtedly without the experience and the flawless skills owned by the undisputed masters of progressive heavy metal.

This band is definitely no replicas, yet it's quite hard to ignore the parts of the performance that have most resemblances, like for instance the song A Lonely Walk where some of the clean vocal parts of Thomas Cuce occasionally comes very close to James LaBrie's tone of voice and when the vocal melodies are pretty similar in terms of type of singing as well. Next To None however benefits from additionally using more aggressive vocals too, but this usage often end up being secondary behind the lead vocals.

These kids were merely somewhere around 15-16 years old when the recordings took place and one legitimate question is really how much, besides being the producer of the album, Portnoy, Sr did contribute to the actual songwriting. Not that it matters if the outcome is satisfactory, but if my assumption is correct and these young guns want to keep going forward in the coming years, I guess that they can't rely on Max's old man forever.

I love the freshness of this experience, but at the same time there's a blatant naivety to the music sometimes as well. The overall performance of the band is hard to complain about and especially when taking their age into account and I must admit that I would never have thought that they were this young. I think that A Light In The Dark is a valid and healthy product at the end of the day and I will for sure give this one more time in the future.

Performance	Originality	Production	Vocals	Songwriting
6	4	7	7	7

Summary
7 chalices of 10 - Tobbe