Long-running British prog metal outfit
Threshold return with their eighth album, providing yet more of what fans expect, along with a few minor changeups such as the unexpectedly funky beat propelling the early standout "Disappear" and the techno synths underpinning "Hollow." Singer Andrew McDermott has a clean, almost old-fashioned voice with perfect diction not only on the power ballad centerpiece "Pilot in the Sky of Dreams" but on those tracks that would normally require a rougher sound. Posh vocals or not,
Dead Reckoning is of that aggressively tasteful school of metal that never breaks into full-on showboating excess or noisy violence. It's metal for people who wish
Marillion had occasionally gone into
Dio territory, or that
Talk Talk and
Queensrÿche had collaborated. Those outside that target demographic will likely remain unimpressed. ~ Stewart Mason