Pagan's Mind- Celestial Entrance

*=Staff's pick	Approaching Through Osiris' Eyes Entrance: Stargate …Of Epic Questions Dimensions Of Fire Dreamscape Lucidity* The Seven Sacred promises Back To The Magic Of Childhood Part 1 - Conception Back To The Magic Of Childhood Part 2 - Exploring Life In Brilliant White Light Aegean Shores* The Prophecy Of Pleiades

Genre	Heavy Metal	Nils K. Rue	Vocals
Tracks	12	Thorstein Aaby	Guitar
Runningtime	72 Min.	Jörn Viggo Lofstad	Guitar
Label	SPV	Steinar Krokmo	Bass
Release	25 Nov. 2003	Stian Kristoffersen	Drums
Country	Norway	Ronny Tegner	Keyboards
Similar artists	Symphony X, Dream Theater, Conception

Celestial Entrance marks the second release from the Norwegian band Pagan's Mind. And it makes me happy to see that not all music that comes from Norway these days are black metal. Nothing wrong with black metal, but it nice too see that the progressive metal hasn't been forgotten in Norway.

Pagan's Mind carries on with the tradition of the progressive metal that we heard from the excellent band Conception with vocalist Roy Kahn, that now can be found in Kamelot.
Combining the progressive style in the vein of Dream Theater with an apparent power metal influence, much reminiscent of Symphony X, yet not as symphonic.

When Fredrik Nordström has been involved in the production is usually turns out very well and even if Celestial Entrance is musically a very good album done by Pagan's Mind it doesn't make it quite the whole way to the finish line. It could have used a couple of tracks that stood out a bit from the rest.

There isn't a "bad" track to find on the album, but on the other hand there isn't one that is better than average either.
That is with two small exceptions, the track Dreamscape Lucidity that starts with double-keg drums and has a beautiful guitarpart. With this track they manage to combine great melodic melodies with progressive aggression, also the Symphony X sounding track Aegean Shore turns out very well, but unfortunately that isn't enough. Those two songs aren't great enough to save the entire album.

And their influences of Dream Theater becomes however a bit to obvious in the final track, The Prophecy Of Pleiades. Just take a listen to the first verse of the song and then compare it with Learning To Live from Images And Words by Dream Theater.

Production	Vocals	Compositions
9	7	6

Summary
6 chalices of 10 - Thomas