Iron Fortress - Iron Fortress

Iron Fortress is Ronnie Skeen's little known side project which attempts to take the technical side of prog and mix it with power metal, but it fails miserably in the process. Progressive fanatics will know him for his guitar playing in Leviathan which achieved a smidgen of fame for such opuses as "Riddles, Questions, Poetry & Outrage" and for doing long, drawn out songs but doing them with more coherency than true prog hacks like Ivanhoe, and being prog metal before the genre was 'in'. Unfortunately he should have never ventured outside of his 'home' band, for his self titled project's debut is a failure in most every way. Leviathan's Jeff Ward has a unique enough voice, and commands the mic well enough to make their repetitive lyrics seem bearable, but Tim Lawrence, who's featured as singer on this mess, has a sterile, generic voice that is reminiscent of many but never a standout. If the songs were sung with just a hint of feeling it might not be so monotonous, but it sounds like Lawrence was just along for the ride to collect a paycheck. Musically the disc switches back and forth between being so irritating you often feel like poking your eardrums out with a pencil rather than continue listening, to being so boring that it takes great willpower not to take the disc out and chuck it across the room. Not to say it's bad all the time, there are a few songs which make mildly pleasant background noise, but overall its just catatonically boring. The production is hollow, typical for pretty much an independant release, the drums slightly give off distortion and the guitar is too far back in the mix most of the time.

1. "Reach for the Future" - Probably the standout song for the album, it falls in the 'background noise' category, but is really not all too bad. There's a decent guitar solo with some nasty bass playing cluttering up the sound, it becomes a bit confusing since it sounds like it was recorded in a tin can, especially the drums. As a throwback to Ronnie Skeen's influences from Leviathan, piano is used as bookends, and probably also to give it that 'true progressive' sound, as everyone knows you can't have progressive metal without keyboards/piano...
2. "Whispers in the Wind" - Synthesized pan flute (or a comparable instrument) opens this track, and since I love pan flute, I was all over this one. Lawrence takes off like a subdued Geoff Tate clone... he asks "can you hear me screaming?" and punctuates it with a scream of course. The middle section beats around the bush in true low budget prog fashion with out-of-place bass that would be better suited for jazz/fusion than prog metal. I think they were shooting for something similiar to Queensryche's "Roads of Madness", but instead ended up with this plodding little track, who's most enjoyable feature is the pan flute.
3. "Eye of the Storm" - Horrible. Lyric writing classes are definitely called for for whoever wrote this crap! The same repetition of "eye of the storm!!" is used so many times that this song has been known to cause insanity (well it nearly drove me insane, having to listen to it a second time to review it was just too painful.. it could cause permenant damage). For some reason it reminds me of Omen's finale album with J.D. Kimball and it's more subdued moments, just not anywhere near the same caliber. I think Iron Maiden used this as an inspirational piece while writing their sickeningly repetitive epic, "Out of the Silent Planet".
4. "Forces of Death" - Being greeted with riffs that sound borrowed off of a mid 80s album by some band no one remembers isn't so bad until the chorus kicks in which consists of the song title with a stretched out "save me" added to the beginning. This is repeated more times than I wish to count. Basically the same structures as the previous song except this 'dramatic' middle section with a bit of acoustic added before the riff that opened it up for us is tossed in again. Surprisingly the ending is decent, probably because it's different from anything heard so far with the pacing stepped up a little and some speaker hopping vocal effects.
5. "Waking Up to a Breakdown" - After hearing this, the only thing I can say is "What the hell was that?" Acoustic backing up little pieces of voice lines from movies or what? Who knows... but thankfully it only lasts for two minutes and consists of banter between men and women back and forth about relationships, personal problems, pleading for salvation through love and what-not. Interesting I suppose but nothing more than a gimmick that will be listened to once to see what it's all about and then skipped from then on (not that anything is worth listening to more than once so far anyway).
6. "Headhunter" - The repetitive syndrome is alive and well but mercifully this is short. Garage recorded drums and the same chords pounded out over and over while that fusion-ish bass rears its ugly head and showcased through the remainder of the song. Avoid avoid!
7. "My Time to Die" - If only we were so lucky that it was their time to die, but unfortunately that title has nothing to do with the demise of the album. Lumbering and Leviathan-ish but lacks any passion at all due to the abysmal repetitive chorus. Any emotional tension that might have built up leading into the chorus is just killed once the song arrives there, as it is delivered as cold as the frozen wasteland and is sadly missing in lyrical content other than blasting out the song title in the same tone. The piano and acoustic guitar that provide the instrumentation for the song (let's just ignore the drums this time around) create simple melodies that are pleasing, if simplistic.
8. "Happy Suffering" - This is a sequel to the other rambling voice over thingie from earlier in the album, and here's a few pieces from it which also sum up Iron Fortress's self titled release: "You think I'm crazy? Then what the hell is wrong with me."...he's probably nuts from listening to this disc. "For one thing you can't sing worth a shit."...that one speaks for itself don't you think? "Without suffering no man will grow."...then those that have listened to this album are growing alot aren't we? "Did you ever reach a point in your life when you say to yourself: this is the best I'm ever going to look, the best I'm ever going to feel, the best I'm ever going to do, and it ain't that great?" At least this track actually makes you think.
9. "Death Eludes Me" - More dark lumbering prog metal, it's kind of like taking "My Time to Die" and mixing it with the lead-in song for the album. It breaks out a few times trying to be like Queensryche's material from "The Warning", which makes this sound anything but 'fresh and new'. Centaur had songs that were better on "Power World" and that's not saying much. However it's saving grace is Skeen's blazing guitar solo tacked on near the ending, it's virtousic although a bit too short... I was hoping he'd play on for a bit longer and let the singer rest for a bit.
10. "Electric Illusion" - Rougher, tougher, and more straightforward than anything else so far on the album, the rumbling drums, heavy fuzzy rhythm guitar and pristine upfront electric axe soloing make for a decent track that is a better introduction the spirit they were trying to capture than any other song on this disc.
11. "Drawn to the Past" - This would have fared better had it been recorded with Leviathan, but this singer just ruins the song, along with the 100% boring guitar. Annoying and drawn out, it's a song that just doesn't seem to want to die. There is some strange synthesizer stuff that crops up, does it's little four second run and then disappears, but get familiar with it, because the same thing will pop back up many times before the song finally comes to a close. It's not dramatic, it doesn't have enough oomph to be power, and instead is just mediocre prog that even lacks a dramatic ending.

There were alot of bands that wanted to sound like Queensryche that came from the 1980s early 1990s among them being Heir Apparent, the sci fi concepts of Lethal, Christian metallers Recon and Sacred Warrior, the latter being almost as good as the band they were trying to copy. Unfortunately Iron Fortress came years after these hopeful copies and fail more miserably than any of them. The combining of light power metal with the prog-like feel of Leviathan and adding the touches of an early 80s Queensryche might sound great on paper, but when put to tape just was not pulled off as well as it should have been, and those failures lay more in what the musicians were playing rather than their own technical skills. The song writing is just poor and messy, very little structure to keep them flowing with parts that are totally out of place and there's no excuse for beating the listener over the head with the same four or five words throughout a tune's duration. Most anyone could write better lyrics than these. Sterile metal that's better suited to the tag of 'progressive' (without really progressing anywhere) than power. I'd rather be locked up in an Iron Fortress than have to listen to this horridly boring disc again. If you need to get your lumbering prog tinged kicks, reach for the far superior Leviathan's "Riddles, Questions, Poetry & Outrage".

RATINGS
Production - 4.0, Songs - 2.0, Lyrics - 1.5, Performance - 2.5
OVERALL
2.5
Review by Alanna Evans
- didn't enjoy one second of this album
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