LANCE KING – A Moment In Chiros

As owner of the Metal label Nightmare Records, Lance King has been dedicated to helping Progressive-Power Metal bands advance both in America and worldwide for over 2 decades.  Lance’s voice is revered by many throughout the Metal community — he’s best known for his truly outstanding work with Balance Of Power, and more recently Pyramaze.  Amazingly, Lance’s resume includes singing duties on more than 25 albums with a cornucopia of bands during the span of his career.  In 2011, Lance decided it was a good time to finally release his first “solo” album, and to bring in a host of talent from Prog-Power bands hailing from lands near and far to assist his efforts.

The end result is A Moment In Chiros, which is a concept album inspired by the 11:11 time prompt phenomenon, and revolves around one man’s journey as a seeker of truth who is looking for answers to the world’s greatest mysteries.

What’s Good

If you’re already familiar with Lance King’s work, there’s no mistaking his voice and vocal style … he has great range and has certain yearning and sincere attributes within his singing that make anything he’s ever been a part of “easy” and enjoyable to listen to, regardless of your musical preferences.  A Moment In Chiros is no exception, and Lance certainly does himself proud when showing off his platinum pipes.  Similar to Geoff Tate from Queensryche, Lance actually has a fairly deep speaking voice (very evident during the various spoken parts of this album) … it’s nothing short of amazing how he can squeeze his vocal chords together to hit some of the high notes strewn throughout this release.

Since Lance has no true “house band” in the catacombs, he invoked assistance from numerous musicians (many of whom have released albums via the Nightmare label), and you can definitely hear the diversity in many of the songs included on this 11-track album.  From that respect, it’s certainly a successful “Progressive Metal” album … with many Power Metal elements.  Tracks such as “Awakening,” “A Moment In Chiros,” and “Infinity Divine” demonstrate insightful use of a variety of instruments and playing styles, and are simply outstanding Progressive-Power Metal songs by anyone’s standards.  Throughout these songs (and the album), Lance focuses both on lyrical punch and delivery while still allowing the talent of the musicians to take center stage … there are plenty of extended instrumental passages and tempo shifts included to take the listener on a journey through the conceptual zones of A Moment In Chiros.  It’s become “cliché,” but this indeed is an album that takes a good half-dozen attentive listens to fully soak in all of the “talent” and musical nuances present.

What’s Less Than Good

This album has all of the individual components to receive a grade of 10 out of 10 … great vocals, interesting lyrics and lyrical patterns, some great guitar work, impressive drumming, and innovative instrumentation use.  However, there’s just something not completely “right” with A Moment In Chiros.  That “not completely right” seems to lie within the mixing of the album.  In many of the songs, when all parts are blended together, the music comes through a bit “fuzzy” and many times the instruments tend to lose some of their own identity.  There’s a certain “crispness” that is typically inherent in the production quality of anything that can be called Progressive music … after all, that certain (top notch) production quality is for all intents and purposes “necessary” to properly capture the complexities typically found in Progressive compositions.   Just about all of the songs on A Moment In Chiros start out with that clarity and crispness that a listener would normally expect from Progressive-Power Metal, but as the songs take shape and blend in the full range of instrumentation, some of that clarity fades.  That “fuzzy phenomena” causes many of the songs to lose a portion of their initial punch and “kick-in-the-gut” power … power that was ever-present in Lance’s work with say Balance Of Power and Pyramaze.  Lance is a busy guy and considering all of the moving parts, A Moment In Chiros came together and was released in lightning speed by today’s industry standards … perhaps if more time was available, some of the unfortunate production idiosyncrasies could have been better addressed.

In A Nutshell

Mixing/Production anomalies aside, A Moment In Chiros is indeed a well-conceived and entertaining listen.  It’s a complex album with many moving parts, but Lance still keeps the concept on track throughout and never sacrifices melody, musical creativity, or artistic innovation at any point from start to finish.  If Progressive-Power Metal is your cup of tea, do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of this Lance King debut … spend some time with it, and you won’t be disappointed.