O.S.I. - Office Of Strategic Influence

*=Staff's pick	The New Math* OSI When You're Ready Horseshoes And B-52´s Head Hello, Helicopter Shutdown* Dirt From A Holy Place Memory Daydreams Lapses Standby (looks like rain)

Genre	Progressive Metal	Kevin Moore	Vocals
Tracks	10	Jim Matheos	Guitar
Runningtime	47 Min.	-	Guitar
Label	Inside Out	Sean Malone	Bass
Release	17 Feb. 2003	Mike Portnoy	Drums
Country	USA	Kevin Moore	Keyboards
Similar artists	Dream Theater, Fates Warning

Jim Matheos, Mike Portnoy and Kevin Moore, do I really need to go on?
Without any bigger surprise it is progressive music that's on the menu when these gentlemen join forces to create a record under the name of O.S.I.

Matheos (Fates Warning), Portnoy (Dream Theater) and Moore (ex-Dream Theater, Fates Warning, Chroma Key) delivers a record with melodic progressive metal that doesn't run off too much in tempo and there's also a lot from their "daytime" jobs in the music. Musically it reminds me very much of the album Disconnected (2000) by Fates Warning as well as Dream Theater's Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence (2002), but with much more electronic elements and sweet landscapes of sound signed by Kevin Moore.

Kevin Moore isn't a singer of a higher grade but his calm and slow style of singing holds together well enough in order to make it work on this album, perhaps it is mostly because the songs isn't exactly speedy and slows down in tempo when it comes to the vocal parts.
The album opens up strongly with the instrumental The New Math to then wander a bit up and down with shifting quality of the songs, and even if they don't run out in instrumental fieldtrips to often they really show that they has some great musical skills.

The album Office of Strategic Influence can not be blamed to be easylistening and it takes you several times of listening to it before everything falls into place, but that is the fine part about this kind of music, the more you listen, the more it grows on to you.

Production	Vocals	Compositions
7	5	6

Summary
6 chalices of 10 - Thomas