Ivory Tower returns...

[Harvester]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNVlz0JqXHE

[Hearing Aid Man]

New vocalist. Hmmm.

[T'ski]

I have "Beyond the Stars" collecting dust somewhere in the house. Never clicked with me.

[LarryD]

That was pretty aggressive for Ivory Tower ....... I have to admit, the vocalist was pretty good for being the new guy ........

[Sparky]

Dunno, have to hear a second tune. Wasn't the problem with the old band that the singer was waaaaaaay too light in the loafers?

[LarryD]

Does anyone have thoughts on this disc ?

[introclaus]

The song “Slave” is very strong, but rest of the album is quite bland and gets boring really fast. The new singer isn’t bad, but he “over sings” too much.

[LarryD]

The song “Slave” is very strong, but rest of the album is quite bland and gets boring really fast. The new singer isn’t bad, but he “over sings” too much.

****Oh man - sad to hear this ..... thanks for the scoop. After all these years, you would think they would come out firing on all cylinders.........

[Guillaume]

The song “Slave” is very strong, but rest of the album is quite bland and gets boring really fast. The new singer isn’t bad, but he “over sings” too much.

****Oh man - sad to hear this ..... thanks for the scoop. After all these years, you would think they would come out firing on all cylinders.........

Claus is as usual really tough on singers... New guy does a very good job and the album as a whole is quite good IMO. Play it all and judge by yourself, you might be surprised!

[LarryD]

I need to put aside the fact that this is not the original Ivory Tower that I knew back in the early 2000s..... they were a melodic prog metal band like so many others that we liked during that time...... I have not checked out their last couple of discs.......

On this new one, they have a new singer - and they are more of a melodic power / semi-prog band now .....and the new singer is ass kicking. He is perfect for this role and one of the better singers I've heard in a long time. He has some serious pipes and gets across the aggression perfectly..... This is definitely a mood disc for me, this will do well in an aggressive state of mind, but I don't see me reaching for it frequently.......a shame, because this singer is really powerful but the music just gets lost after a few songs.....

[Sir Exar Kun]

I first listened to this probably six to eight weeks ago, and shelved it feeling disappointed. Ivory Tower is supposed to be a proggy Dream Theater clone. At least they WERE.

Broke it back out yesterday, and when going into it minus those expectations I actually REALLY enjoyed it for what it is..... Which is pretty much a Swedish (yes, even though they are German) power metal band ala the Tad Morose / Morgana LeFay / Inmoria crowd..... Closest comparison is probably to the early Tad Morose stuff, albeit less doomy. As Larry said, the singer is quite excellent, and actually reminds me a bit of Lizzy Borden on a couple of tracks.

I won't be keeping this on constant rotation, but I'm very glad I went back to it as it's much better than I first gave it credit for.....