Andrew Danso

The most difficult pill to swallow when it comes to FeedForward, is that the band themselves take it all with militant seriousness, blind to the sophomoric nature of the work. It should be a huge amount of nostalgic fun, but instead, it all washes off into whimsical daftness.

Their riffing owes influence to the likes of Marillion and Whitesnake; inevitably when the vocal gets raging they sound like most progressive-cum-eighties conversions of Nightwish. They’re an ambitious collective though, with the tracks often fractured enough to warrant an arrangement slinging in early Nightwish (think “Elvenpath”) – which is much less of a complement than you might think.

Early Nightwish was haggardly under produced, and it puts into focus that aspiring progressive acts really ought to leap onto a producers shoulders to convert their big ideas into something believable; needed to create the dips in energy for the verse extensions not to wearingly drag on, and clever twists to swirl the elements in a track. Three amps, a microphone, and a drum kit, simply isn’t enough anymore.

5/10 Powerplay #140