Images of Eden - Rebuilding The Ruins
Images of Eden was born in 1999 when main man Gordon Tittsworth went into the studio to record the debut album.
The band play a mixture of progressive metal and traditional heavy metal. Early on in the CD, for example, when listening to the opening track, ‘Crosses In The Sand’, especially when the vocals kick in all I could think of was Iron Maiden, as on the faster tracks Gordon sounds a lot like Bruce Dickenson. However, later on I noted other influences such as Rush, Dream Theater, Queensryche and Fates Warning.
As expected with this style of music, there are plenty of twists and turns. And talking of twists, one twist to my usual listening habits when reviewing this album was the fact that I became really interested in listening to the lyrics, particularly on tracks like ‘My Stigmata’. I’m not sure if they are Christian, but they certainly do have a spiritual vibe to them. Checking back on the bio at their website I note that there has been a consistent lyrical theme to their albums focused on isolation from the negative aspects of the world.
Given what I have said already it isn’t surprising that the band work themselves up to closing the album with a melodic progressive metal 12 min epic called ‘Sunlight of the Spirit part iv: Images Of Eden’. This turns out to be the track that I think is the strongest on the album. It is a fitting end to an interesting album.