Tracks:
Be Careful It's My Head Too
The Path of Darkness
Shadow Self
Sleeping Beauty
The Dark Side
Portrait F in Dark Waters
Ecstasy Arise
Section X

"Section X" appears to be a concept album revolving around a sci-fi styled storyline. It seems that some scientist comes up with a way to harness the full potential of the human brain. He creates a clone of himself and fills up its brain with knowledge gained from the great minds of the world. Somehow he is able to access this knowledge through virtual reality. In the end of course he becomes evil, does evil things, and suffers a fitting and horrible demise.

Storyline aside, this is a pretty interesting album. The vocals have a tendency to visit those upper registers associated with 80's metal bands, but manage to do so without really sounding dated. I suppose it helps that the music has a more modern feel to it.

Actually, it reminds me a little bit of Symphony X. It sounds quite fresh and new, yet it is easy to hear that it is descended from the same family tree as the metal of old. Though they sound nothing alike, this reminds me of Morgana Lefay in that they manage to sound so fresh while at the same time making me long for the past. It's just heavy metal, ya know?

I guess you would have to say this is more prog metal than power metal, but I don't feel right calling it prog metal either. The musicianship is excellent, but it doesn't seem contrived just to show musical chops like so much prog metal seem to do. Granted, the instrumental track "Portrait F in Dark Waters" is a bit wanky (though it is piano wank, not guitar wank) it is still quite an excellent track.

Overall, I think this is a very good album. It could maybe use a little more polish to it, but it is not suffering from the lack of it. There is lots of excellent guitar work and storyline is interesting. Check it out.