Pandea – Soylent Green

site | label | buy

Pandea is a new project put together by Mind Odyssey guitarist Dan Uhden, featuring several different singers, and their debut album is based on the Charlton Heston movie ‘Soylent Green’, with each of the singers voicing one or more different characters. Uhden’s Mind Odyssey band-mate Mario Le Mole, and his former Countdown band-mate Jacky Lee Man (also Pharao) are probably the two most notable of the five vocalists, alongside Norbert Schmidt, Norbert Bode and Ille Ilgner (ZigZag), all of which sound suitable different to each other to carry off the different characters idea. Unfortunately one of them sounds exactly like Geoff Tate (Queensrÿche), one like Kai Hansen (Gamma Ray) and one like Tobias Sammet (Edguy), and with the music being a 50/50 cross between Gamma Ray and Ayreon, it’s hard to pick out a great deal of originality in what’s on offer. It’s progressive in places, but mostly heavy power metal with big guitars, and a little more aggression and less pomp than might normally be found in that style, but when Clan of Salutation could be Edguy with input from Arjen Lucassen, Nomadic Life could be Queensrÿche and Lost Eternity could be Gamma Ray, with elements of the likes of Blind Guardian elsewhere, the undoubted original idea starts to sound old. That said, it isn’t a direct rip-off at all, and is in actual fact a very enjoyable album which will appeal directly to fans of all of the bands name-checked here.

Written by Andy Lye
More: 2010, Albums, Power Metal, Quick.Play Reviews, Pandea