sorted from the most to the least favourite...
1.
Porcupine Tree - The Incident
One of the best offerings of the band. The Incident is pushing boundaries further again, concept, craziest in the range of music expression, performances and endless inspiration, achievments in terms of sound and production. It belongs to their darkest and least accesible albums. Demanding, deep and emotional journey, to my ears succeeded only by his predecessor, Fear of a Blank Planet. Album of the year.
grade: 4,5/5
2.
Steve Hackett - Out of the Tunnel's Mouth
Craftmanship, magic, intimacy, vibe, feeling and power behind each note, it has all Hackett's trademarks plus quite personal lyrics. Though he turned 60, he's still at top form. Variety of songs, instruments and styles is huge again. From furious multi-layered guitar rock, to flamenco jamming, blues, classical, balladry . From anthemic, melancholic ambience to middle-eastern motives. Woodwinds, glockenspiels, thunderous bass of Ch. Squire, 12-string of A. Phillips and fragile female harmony vocals. His band is outstanding as usually. Fantastic production and sound, though it was recorded in Steve's living room.
grade: 4/5
3.
Devin Townsend Project - KI
Mozart of metal with godly voice offers two albums in 2009. KI is the most mellow, slow paced, minimalistic to date. And one of his best as well. Quite difficult to get into. Though songwriting isn't complicated, arrangements and build-ups are great and detailed. Though it is mellow and slower, it has a lot of energy and power, typical for Townsend, but transformed into different areas. There is also a lot of fun (Elvis imitiation on Trainfire), and moments of genius (title track).
grade:4/5
4.
Subsignal - Beautiful and Monstrous
Band formed by ex-Sieges Even members, singer Arno Menses and guitarist Marcus Steffen. Their debut contains great, inspired songwriting, catchy, complex, original, emotional piece of prog in SE vein, just more varied in palette of sounds (keyboards) and more accesible. Especially outstanding harmonies and guitar licks are recognizable throughout. A bit unfortunately rest of musicians aren't fully on par with them, keyboards sometimes sound cheesy. There I can feel reserves. Nevertheless quite gorgeous, promising album.
grade:3,5/5
5.
Transatlantic - The Whirlwind
Return of this supergroup pleased me in the end, though not on par with previous masterworks. Material there contains enough for great 40-min album. Mostly in fashion "early Genesis meet latter Beatles", influenced finely by pomp and top musicianship of individual members' bands. Unfortunately another big part is defected by Morse latter-day rather stiff solo-like stuff. Highlights are Overture/Whirlwind, A Man Can Feel, Out of the Night, Evermore, and particulary Is It Really Happening? and Spinning. Lenny Johnson is very funny. Bunch of good covers as well. Loving Trewavas's bass and feel great spot of Stolt. Signs of collective alchemy survived - something that I didn't have big expectations for.
grade:3,5/5
6.
Riverside - Anno Domini High Definition
Riverside's return to form. The most consistent album, and the best since debut Out of Myself. Rocking hard, amazing instrumental performances, tight interplay, pulls out a lot of emotions, agression, but also brining mellow passages, powerful memorable hooks and very exotic twists. Though dark as ever, not as depressive and desperate feel as previous effort.
grade:3,5/5
7.
Pain of Salvation - Linoleum (EP)
Great small album, quite old-fashioned seventies sound. I love especially infectiousness and power of title track, with electric piano break. Raw production, Daniel's excellent voice shines again as ever, quite agressive, snaky, dramatic. Fantastic cover of Yellow Raven as well (first one band ever did, as far as I remember). Preindicating we should look forward for Road Salt album.
grade:3,5/5
8.
The Tangent - Down and Out from Paris and London
Consistently good as ever, nothing really new though. Tillson managed to collect just british musicians and gone is TFK influence. It is again focusing on themes of funny - satiric and ironic view on society and higher powers. Prog with canterbury feel, jazzy, folkish, very playful and epic atmosphere. Great musicianship as usually, good music ideas though themes are long-winded and sometimes difficult to focus on.
grade:3/5
9.
The Mars Volta - Octahedron
Probably small shock for some fans. Songs of Octahedron are mostly atmospheric, subtle with rather simple chord progressions and quite catchy hooks. It is Cedric Zavala who steals the show here. He shows full capabilities of his voice - dramatic, scary and melancholic sides, flowing easily, from octave to octave, from anger to sorrow. Guitar work is mostly pure and uncomplicated, but effective, greatly complementing the voice. Drumming is delightful to my tastes. Arrangements are reminiscent of early psychedelic Pink Floyd.
grade:3/5
10.
IQ - Frequency
Even without crucial member, keyboardist Martin Orford, IQ are still making consistently fine stuff. Stylistically without much change, new keyboard player is really good and it is almost not recognizable that Orford's gone, music is just a bit updated and refreshed. Strong sense of melodies, epic themes, freezing atmosphere, quite reminding their epic Subterranea. A bit heavier, probably one of their strongest albums overall.
grade:3/5
11.
Devin Townsend Project - Addicted
Addicted, on contrary, is Townsen's most mainstream sounding and quite heavy, distorted and agressive one. No build-ups, everything is served in very straighforward way. Guest singer - Anneke van Giersbergen sounds amazing as ever, and has practically equal space as Townsend. She's perfect complement to his voice. Despite its directness it's a great album, filled with catchy, infectious, powerful parts, that will make you shout and jump.
grade:3/5
12.
Mew - No More Stories are Told Today...
Album bordering on childish indie pop and experimental music with progressive influences. Overall, very original sophomore effort. Unconventional odd rhythm structures, but still with sense of haunting melodies of high-pitched singer (similarities to Jon Anderson). Everything somehow consistent. Very good follow-up to the first album of young band which has found the difficult way of blending originality and artistry with commercial success.
grade:3/5
13.
Shadow Gallery - Digital Ghosts
After Mike Baker's sudden passing away the band reborn and found new singer, who filled his shoes in good style. Slightly different, but still in certain Shadow Gallery spirit. The band again improved songwriting, into epic greatness and extravaganza vocals of first track. Solid hroughout, virtuoso metal, but also with appeal on songwriting, melodies, playful interplay with a lot of energy.
grade:3/5
14.
Saga - The Human Condition
Without Michael Sadler the band approached new sound and direction. Though Rob Moratti is really fine singer, his phrasing, vocalization and melodies are totally different than we are used to have from Saga, which for me is dificut to overcome. Band's characetristic tasteful instrumental licks and hooks are still quite present. Songwriting goes on heavier edge, despite its originality, production and freshness I find it weaker than preivous efforts.
grade:2,5/5
15.
OSI - Blood
OSI succeeded their second album, but didn't reach the depth of first. PTs' Harrison's drumming is excellent replacement for Portnoy's, Moore's textures are more varied (use of interesting retro synths a la No Quarter) and his voice is even gloomier. Guitar riffs are sharp-edged and heavy as hell, some parts are excellent (especially in first three pieces), but some are also quite annoying electro-noise.
grade:2,5/5
16.
maudlin of the Well - Part the Second
Avantgarde post-rock with doomy and jazzy feel, seems to me slightly influenced by King Crimson (Lizard-Larks' era) - original piece of music, though demanding, not as chaotic as Kayo Dot to my senses. Hypnotic, quite beautiful and mellow on places, lightly symphonic with modest string/brass textures. Still not much cohesive, to my ears, their experimentalism is sometimes going nowhere.
grade:2,5/5
17.
Blind Ego - Numb
Second effort of Kale Wallner's project, guitarist of RPWL. Good, rocking album with a bit of heavy prog. Each song is solid, energetic, with dynamics, but nothing really exceptional. RPWL meets Arena, with raw and angry sound. Good spot of Arena members - few nice solos by Mr. John Mitchell, bassline of John Jowitt, and theatrical singing of Paul Wrightson shines throughout.
grade:2,5/5
18.
Guilt Machine - On This Perfect Day
Arjen's excercise in average writing - seems to me not much inspired musically. It doesn't sound so forced or cliched as latest Ayreon album, but also there aren't really standout musical points which Ayreon still had. Relaxing, mid-tempo music with stable flow, it offers generally mellower direction, quite melancholic, includes spoken narrations in many world's languages. We have some interesting positives here - good high-pitched sounding singer, mellotrons, drumming of ex-Porcupine Tree Chris Maitland and of course typical Lucassen's licks.
grade:2,5/5
19.
Dream Theater - Black Clouds and Silver Linings
This album of them is kind of weird for me. Generally I find it as a bigger kitch than ever, routine, uninspired, over-the-top, especially LaBrie vocals and pointless key/gtr solos (excluding guitar solo in The Best of Times). Though there is one long, really epic, The Count of Tuscany, where they found balance, full of incredible musicianship, tricky, sometimes original songwriting, progressing and real emotions (!). It saves last signs of grace being one their best pieces ever, I can say on par with unsurpassable A Change of Seasons.
grade:2/5
20.
The Gathering - The West Pole
New effort, first without Anneke, being replaced with very capable, beautifully sounding Silje. Still with dark characteristic ambience, it is The Gathering I can say. I just feel problems with cohesivness, also because of using more lead singers. I percieve more filler music, simple ideas that doesn't have potential to be developed into quality songs. Though not drastic change, it is let down since last album.
grade:2/5
21.
Pure Reason Revolution - Amor Vincit Omnia
Gone is lush Beach Boys-like vocal complexity and Floydish/Porcupinish atmosphere, and even though some songs contain great moments, in the (a bit electro-enhanced) vein of first album, most of them are some repetitive electro-pop-disco, machine and sample driven music. It is step by direction that isn't welcomed by me. Some good ideas are buried in the weird arrangements.
grade:2/5
22.
Mastodon - Crack the Skye
Praised album of the last year, though it is quite a ferocious, original and from musical point of view outstanding prog metal, I hardly can stand these Ozzy-like vocals (despite I like Ozzy, sometimes) and the strangely nervous atmosphere.
grade:2/5
23.
Heaven and Hell - Devil you Know
Almost only positive thing about effort of this Black Sabbath incarnation I can say that Dio's voice still in his age has passion and strength. Riffs are nice here and there, but music is mostly slowed-down, lacking energy and power. Songwriting is sub par, drums especially have no force. Sounds quite dated to me.
grade:1/5
24.
Gazpacho - Tick Tock
I find this album very sluggish, singer seems to me overplaying, not convincing to my ears, pathetic rather negatively. Instrumentally it is nothing new or exceptional, quite heavy-handed, plus simple structures. Lack of ideas packed in the atmosphere effects and coated with sweet instruments as violin. This one just doesn't work to me at all. Good sound and production values nevertheless.
grade:1/5
25.
Phideaux - Number 7
Don't understand the hype about this. It's mixed bag of many influences but I miss personality, animation, it sounds lifeless, sometimes funny. Tried to give this album few spins but was impressed less and less. Eastern influence of A Fistful of Fortitude sounds so forced. Folkish atmosphere also sounds manufactured. Also quite amateurish on places, mainly songwriting (e.g. - Storia Senti, especially female voices, despite being nice sounding).
grade:1/5
26.
Agents Of Mercy - The Fading Ghost of Twilight
Apart from great title track (beautiful one, perfectly blending Foxtrot-era Genesis and The Flower Kings at the best) I perceive it as boring, queery album, slowly-blues based, without any interesting ideas. Pleasant just as background. Though there is bunch of great musicians, including Roine Stolt and Jonas Reingold, it is still quite far weaker than recent TFK.
grade:1/5
Gazpacho
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