MindMaze: Resolve (Inner Wound)

American melodic/progressive/power metal band MindMaze is back with a new studio album, their third to date, titled Resolve. It’s the band’s second album since being signed to the Inner Wound label, and really should be the album that gets MindMaze in front of a wider audience.

I should state my bias up front: I like this band. I think they work hard and have real talent, and I contributed to the Kickstarter campaign for Resolve. They’re also the “house band” for a lot of the shows I see in Baltimore, so I’m not exactly a neutral observer here. Take that into consideration when I say that Resolve is a hell of a good album, and is the best thing this band has done to date.

MindMaze has always done a great job of hitting that happy medium between prog metal technicality (seriously, some of Jeff Teets’s solos are insane, and his tones are gorgeous) and the melody and crunch of power metal, and that’s the case again here. Resolve touches on old Dream Theater, Symphony X, Sonata Arctica and Tad Morose at times. It never goes too far in either direction, though the 11-minute closer “The Path to Perseverance” comes close. The sweet spots are the heavy, melodic, 5-6 minute songs like “Fight the Future,” “Sign of Life” and “One More Moment.” Oddly enough, the instrumental opener “Reverie” is one of the best moments on Resolve.

With each new album, MindMaze takes a big step forward, and that’s definitely the case here. Resolve features the band at their very best. The musicianship is stunning and Sarah Teets’s vocals convey a world of power and emotion, but the songwriting in particular – lyrically and conceptually as well as the arrangements – is just a level above their previous albums (which were really good to begin with). I’d put Resolve up against anything else the prog/power genre has to offer this year. It’s definitely an album that fans of Pyramaze, Theocracy, Labyrinth, Helion Prime and early Dream Theater will want to hear.

<br />