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The Italian progressive metal band Mind Key presented their debut Journey Of A Rough Diamond in 2004 and now they deliver the follow up Pulse For A Graveheart. The opener is called Sunset Highway and makes it easy to get into the album, coz it has a catchy melody to hook you up. The guys manage to combine progressive passages with emotional vocals, but they also surprise with a short piano part. The crunchy guitar riffs are the counter part to Dario de Cicco's keyboard. To compare it with Dream Theater's Pull Me Under would be an exaggeration, but it's a bit in the vein of it. More melodic and with a great guitar part they kick off The Seventh Seal. A kind of progressive melodic metal tune... Imagine a tune of Axel Rudi Pell in a progressive version and you get an idea of The Seventh Seal. For Citizen Of Greed they ease off a bit... Beside heavy riffs you get some acoustic guitar parts by Emanuele Colella. A surprise might be the distorted vocals... But for me it fits in just great, coz it gives the song a different atmosphere... And an aggressive edge - for a moment. Btw, here you hear Derek Shirinan playing keyboards! Dead Fame Hunter is one of the long tracks and in the beginning has a 70's prog rock keyboard part, but soon the guitars take over. With twists and turns they can keep the listeners attention during this 8-minute tune. Ventone (The Island) is an acoustic guitar track, but then they go full force with Graveheart! At this fast heavy rocker they get support by Evergrey's Tom S. Englund who joins Aurelio Fierro on the mic. The parts taken from some speech are in German - and later in English - and somehow disturbing, but I think that was their aim... One of my favorites on Pulse For A Graveheart! The longest track is Now Until Forever which features Reb Beach on guitar - and shows some different facets of Mind Key. The closer is the balladesque A New Generation. The first half is based on acoustic guitar and vocals, then a symphonic intermezzo before the acoustic guitar and singer Aurelio Fierro taking over, but then the song explodes! But they stick to the cool vocal line!
Mind Key present a kind of progressive melodic metal which isn't just interesting for fans of progressive metal! Even if here and there they might push a bit too far for melodic metal fans, but you should give them a chance! With Aurelio Fierro they have a great singer and the vocal melodies can hook you up. Well done!
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