If ultra technical Prog Metal is your thing, then there's no doubt you'll live this 'Life' to the full.

You have to admire the tenacity and perseverance of Italian Progressive Metal sextet Time Grid, with the band's debut effort 'Life' taking over a decade to spring from seed to fruition. Forming back in 2001 when drummer Remi Poussier and guitarist Steve Huber teamed up, the pair recruited Mathias Reuser to add keyboards and vocals not long after. A few false starts and splits later and in 2006, second keyboard player Raphael Sudan joined the band, before bassist Pierre Sottas and second vocalist Laetitia Fontannaz completed the line-up later the same year. By 2009 a fortuitous meeting with the owner of a recording studio finds the beginnings proper of 'Life', although through a mixture of unfortunate events (recorded guitar parts being lost long after their completion and the person hired to mix the album ditching the project a year and a half in...) a further three years would pass before a finished product would emerge.

So unsurprisingly, given the genre Time Grid operate in, three words spring to mind when initially hearing 'Life': "early Dream Theater". However repeat visits do offer up some alternative visions. Obviously the mix of female and male vocals delivers a slightly more contemporary feel (they may actually have been an innovation back in 2009...) and while the comparison to the mighty Theater will attest to the technicality of what Time Grid serve up, the results of 'Life' are actually even more complex, possibly too much so for many to cope with. Don't get me wrong, the musicianship on show here is exemplary; however melody is at a premium, with a propensity to shove in as many time changes, snare rolls, riffs, keyboard flurries, fret explosions, bass drum batters and vocal interchanges as possible. Thus giving the likes of 'Premices' or 'Emptiness' the feel of many disparate musical parts simply being glued together to see what sticks, leaving a less than organic feel to much of what occurs on this album. Add to that theatrical vocals from both Reusser and Fontannaz and things all too often feel like they are kept at arms length from the listener, as something to be admired like a painting on a wall, rather than experienced and thoroughly engaged with.

However if ultra technical Prog Metal is your thing, then in fairness there's no doubt you'll live this 'Life' to the full.

Steven Reid