Soul Secret - Closer to Daylight

Soul Secret - Closer to Daylight
Galileo Records

This second album sees bassist Lucio Grill replaced by Claudio Casaburi and Fabio Manda on vocals with guest appearances from Marco Sfogli (guitar, James LaBrie) on “River’s Edge”, Anna Assentato on “If”, and Arno Menses (vocals, Subsignal, ex Sieges Even) on the epic 15 min “Aftermath”.  This is solid prog metal fare, a rich keyboard filling between crunchy and riffing guitar, underpinned by technically thrilling drums.  I quite like it when prog metal allows the solo keyboard to feature, as it does here alongside the expected guitar heroics (e.g. “the Shelter”, “Behind the Curtain”)). Soul Secret enhance their sound through variety, for example the dynamic instrumental jazz breaks of the aforementioned “River’s Edge”, the balladic (“If) or the downright proggy (“the Shelter” and “Aftermath”).  Whilst the album is not an out and out classic, there is plenty of ebb, flow, harmony and diversity to make a dynamic difference that the prog metal fan should enjoy.  DP