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The Progressive Souls Collective - Sonic Birth (2020)

Posted By: v3122

Date: 17 Oct 2020 15:00:42

The Progressive Souls Collective - Sonic Birth (2020)
EAC | Flac(Image) + Cue + Log & MP3 CBR 320Kbps
Metalville Records, MV0252 | ~ 476 or 148 Mb | Artwork(jpg) -> 3.11 Mb
Progressive Rock, Progressive Metal

The Progressive Souls Collective and the debut album, Sonic Birth, is the brainchild of German guitarist Florian Zepf. It's an ambitious and massive recording of modern progressive metal. To accomplish the task, Zepf was able to enlist the talent of some major league prog players. These musicians include drummer Aquiles Priester (Tony MacAlpine), bassist Conner Green (Haken), Kevin Moore (O.S.I., Chroma Key) for loops and programming, percussionist Luis Conte (Phil Collins, Eric Clapton, et al), and keyboard player Derek Sherinian (Sons Of Apollo, et al). Vocals are provided by Vladimir Lalic (Organized Chaos), a trained up opera singer. Check out these two links to learn more about the project and the album and the participants.

To say that Sonic Birth is ambitious and massive is truly an understatement. Besides all the aforementioned players, there are more musicians and instruments involved including violins, viola, and cello, but also fiddle, harp, Uillean pipes, flutes, clarinet, oboe, and horns. The question is, are they heard? More on that in a moment. Lyrically, I believe the songs explore deep intellectual, emotional, and psychological subjects, but lyrics were not supplied. One song, Destiny Inc, has at least 15 references (which can be found on the album link above) from what appear to be philosophers and a biochemist. Brain freeze.

So, musically, what's going on here? A simple distillation would be to call The Progressive Collective Project sound expansive, heavy, and dense progressive metal strongly informed by thick layers of synths, programming, and riffage. Yet, with this in mind, the commanding participants are definitely Sherinian's keyboards and Zepf's wall of riffage. They're practically overwhelming. Thankfully, they don't decimate the vocals (for the most part).

Honestly, it will take you several listens to dissect this material to find the subtleties and nuances within the arrangements. For instance, on my first spin I wasn't sure I heard a Zepf guitar solo, simply because everything is so dense and busy. But the are there and notable within Metature, Killing Beliefs, or A Formula For Happiness. But I'm not sure about some of those aforementioned additional instruments. By example, I couldn't find the horns within Hurt. I suppose they are there. Nor could I hear the violins, viola, or cello within Metature or the lengthy prog monster Destiny Inc. My favorite song on the album, You And Me Alone, which features a duet with vocalist Megan Burtt, includes fiddle, harp, clarinet, oboe, and more, but you better pay attention because they could be easily be mistaken for synths or programming. As I said, there's much to explore within Sonic Birth, if you have temperament, time, and patience. Nevertheless, The Progressive Collective Project and Sonic Birth offers listeners a rich ensemble cast of international prog musicians delivering some creative and impressive progressive metal. Recommended.

~ dangerdog.com

The Progressive Souls Collective - Sonic Birth (2020):

Tracklist:

01. Metature 04:58
02. Comfortable Darkness 02:49
03. Killing True Beliefs 06:27
04. Fractional Emotion 06:05
05. A Formula for Happiness 06:50
06. Inner Circle 02:10
07. You and Me Alone 05:12
08. Hurt 04:39
09. Destiny Inc. 15:37
10. Mind Treasures 01:44
11. With Others 06:19

Florian Zepf - guitar
Vladimir Lalic - vocals
Conner Green - bass
Aquiles Priester - drums
Luis Conte - percussion
Kevin Moore - loops / programming

EAC Log

Exact Audio Copy V1.3 from 2. September 2016

EAC extraction logfile from 15. October 2020, 13:49

The Progressive Souls Collective / Sonic Birth

Used drive : ASUS DRW-24D5MT Adapter: 1 ID: 0

Read mode : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No

Read offset correction : 6
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
Used interface : Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000
Gap handling : Appended to previous track

Used output format : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate : 1024 kBit/s
Quality : High
Add ID3 tag : No
Command line compressor : C:\Program Files (x86)\Exact Audio Copy\Flac\flac.exe
Additional command line options : -V -8 -T "Genre=%genre%" -T "Artist=%artist%" -T "Title=%title%" -T "Album=%albumtitle%" -T "Date=%year%" -T "Tracknumber=%tracknr%" -T "Comment=%comment%" %source%

TOC of the extracted CD

Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––-
1 | 0:00.00 | 4:58.03 | 0 | 22352
2 | 4:58.03 | 2:49.25 | 22353 | 35052
3 | 7:47.28 | 6:27.28 | 35053 | 64105
4 | 14:14.56 | 6:05.59 | 64106 | 91539
5 | 20:20.40 | 6:50.25 | 91540 | 122314
6 | 27:10.65 | 2:10.47 | 122315 | 132111
7 | 29:21.37 | 5:12.40 | 132112 | 155551
8 | 34:34.02 | 4:39.32 | 155552 | 176508
9 | 39:13.34 | 15:37.18 | 176509 | 246801
10 | 54:50.52 | 1:44.06 | 246802 | 254607
11 | 56:34.58 | 6:19.28 | 254608 | 283060

Track 1

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Track 2

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Track 3

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Track 4

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Track 5

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Track 6

Filename H:\Sket4er\The Progressive Souls Collective – Sonic Birth 2020\06 Inner Circle.wav

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Track 7

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Track 8

Filename H:\Sket4er\The Progressive Souls Collective – Sonic Birth 2020\08 Hurt.wav

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Track 9

Filename H:\Sket4er\The Progressive Souls Collective – Sonic Birth 2020\09 Destiny Inc..wav

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Track 10

Filename H:\Sket4er\The Progressive Souls Collective – Sonic Birth 2020\10 Mind Treasures.wav

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Track 11

Filename H:\Sket4er\The Progressive Souls Collective – Sonic Birth 2020\11 With Others.wav

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None of the tracks are present in the AccurateRip database

No errors occurred

End of status report

–– CUETools DB Plugin V2.1.6

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Submit result: nHAsiE6NXg6y5M9nHTevPGItrJ4- has been confirmed
Track | CTDB Status
1 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
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3 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
4 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
5 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
6 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
7 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
8 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
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==== Log checksum 8F0904583CDFF77D0988ECB99557941C4617B9DC956716CA4E373644280A002E ====

CUETools Log

[CUETools log; Date: 17.10.2020 14:51:55; Version: 2.1.4]
[AccurateRip ID: 00182b8b-00d5f1ed-920ebe0b] disk not present in database.

Track Peak [ CRC32 ] [W/O NULL] [ LOG ]
– 100,0 [35E9DF19] [67C171AB]
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10 96,8 [54B18002] [89B6F659] CRC32
11 98,5 [D74B2A2A] [69F6FC25] CRC32

All thanks go to sket4er

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