Sender of Thoughts

From my review of Leaving the Past Behind, one might come away with the impression that there was a continuity between the early USPM-influenced progressive metal of the band’s first few albums, and the later skull-crushing riffage of the band’s early-oughties heyday. If you listen carefully, there certainly is a continuity. The imprint of Crimson Glory, Queensrÿche and early Savatage on Undead and Matters of the Dark is still very much delible.

But as this album shows, the road between there and here was a fairly choppy one. Sender of Thoughts occupies an overgrown, forgotten side road in the Tad Morose discography, in which the progressive stylings of Leaving the Past Behind are still present, but more effort is put into composing long, sparse, atmospheric melodies. The sound as a result is thinner, sparser, occasionally doomier than Leaving the Past Behind, with Morén and Eriksson more prominent than they were before. Morén’s drumwork is crisp and does a lot of heavy lifting on this album, but for some reason the mixing makes it seem tinny here.

One can’t say the music is unemotional or lacking in character. If I were forced to make a direct comparison, I’d say there’s a deliberate turn toward what Savatage was doing around the same time with Edge of Thorns and Handful of Rain (atmospheric, moving at an unhurried pace, given to more keyboard play); but even that comparison is somewhat strained by the fact that the kinetics of the music are so divergent. And Edge of Thorns in particular was a particularly well thought-out album, whereas it seems this one could have used a little work. For all the raw potential at work here, it’s hard not to think of Sender of Thoughts as something of an afterthought to Leaving the Past Behind; one can hear the similarity of the two albums, but this one seems to have gotten lost in some ways. All the progressive elements which make later Tad Morose albums so awesome are there; it’s just that they haven’t quite been assembled yet.

On Sender, Tad Morose seems to like playing with eerie, echoing minor-chord keyboard progressions and still spaces, with the drums doing at times most of the support work. Too many of the songs (like ‘Sender of Thoughts’, ‘Lost in Time’, ‘Time of Silence’) have an unfortunate tendency to plod. And some of the most egregious instances of weirdness happen at inappropriate places. In particular, ‘Netherworld’ feels somewhat like a pretentious ‘screw-you’ to the listener: a plonking mess of discordant keyboard effects.

That having been said, you still get some good kinetics and head-bobbing, anthemic moments on ‘Circle of Souls’ – and even on the weird meandering pieces like ‘Fading Pictures’ and ‘Morning Sun’. And sometimes the willingness to experiment with progressive elements and spacier composition works in Tad Morose’s favour: ‘Different Eyes’ alternates between a bluesy, loungy tempo which puts Kristian Andrén’s unique vocals to their best use yet, and a hard-driving chorus which approaches being worthy of the name Tad Morose built for themselves. And ‘Forever Gone’ is a sterling example of how this more atmospheric style of music can hang together well. As to be expected, perhaps, the lyrics treat mostly with surrealism, depression, premonitions of the afterlife, and the blurring of the boundary between dreaming and waking life – but notably (at least in their album art this time around) they seem to be turning already to distant antiquity and the deserts of the ancient Near East as a source of inspiration.

On the whole (apart from weird-for-weirdness’-sake bits like ‘Netherworld’), Sender of Thoughts is still very much listenable music. But if someone were to have played this album blind to me, without telling me a thing about it beforehand, I would never even think to guess that it was the same band that would later send forth into the world such mighty metal behemoths as Undead and Modus Vivendi. It’s not an album which gets a lot of replay in my library.

14 / 20

I love purchasing Cds for a very cheap price, then finding out that they are not only good, but the Album is large in length. However, I wouldn't call them Power Metal, I'd call them Melodic Classical Metal. But I'm not going to split hairs.

The direction that these people think in are strange. Their Keyboardist is quite bizarre, not to mention the timing the songs are in. The only particular aspect of the album that disappointed me was how un-fluid it was. I am sorry I can't expand on that, but when you hear it you will understand what I mean.

The band has a very strong resemblance to Dream Theater, even though I like these guys more, the genre is almost exactly the same. The song writing qualities that T.M. possesses is quite satisfying. It takes a bit of talent to create music that sends you into a trance-like state, without the genre actually being trance.

The entire album, with few exceptions is mid-paced, which under normal circumstances would be disappointing (Power Metal is supposed to be fast), but when you are in a trance, your too out of it to care. The best time to listen to them is when you want to listen to something while your falling asleep. The album doesn't work well when played loud. To fully appreciate the music you must listen to the melodic segment of it, do not under any circumstances try to like them for their rhythm. Otherwise you will regret buying their Cd.