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Although not a rarity, it has been sometime since I was left open mouthed by a solo album, but by the hairy ass of Satan himself, this is a fucking scorcher. Known largely — who are we kidding — for his performance on the Dream Theater debut When Dream and Day Unite back in the late 80s, vocalist Charlie Dominici practically vanished off the earth's face for nearly 20 years before deciding to once again enter the world of music, recording the first part of his patented crime fiction trilogy as an entirely acoustic affair that was ignored as a whole by the metal community, but as he fights back with the second act of his 03 opus, Charlie-boy has invited a few chums to help him out, and those chums would be the complete line up of Italian Prog Metallers Solid Vision.

Solid Vision's tenure as a DT cover band may well suggest a mere clone and cash in of Dominici's former glory days, but it is not so. In fact, and this has been commented on many times, the mixture of American and Italian blood gives 03 A Trilogy Part 2 a very varied texture, covering many aspects of the Progressive Metal genre, including elements of Riverside, Redemption, Silent Voices, Pagan's Mind and Dreamscape along with the usual DT and Fates Warning inflections. Dominici himself compensates for this constant roil of influences by shifting his subtle vocals to varying aspects of his personality, sounding like Ray Adler one minute, Kai Hansen the next (listen to "Greed, The Evil Seed" and tell me that's not our favourite short German wailer behind the mic?). The musicians all prove to be more than able, leaving no stone unturned on the generic prog principal with a whole host of complex arrangements, tricky time changes, endless soloing, and mouth watering melodies. The band manages to sound like a tight unit despite their obvious detachment, and the production really gives the songs time to develop over an extended period of time. Right from the double battering of "The Monster" and the awesome "Nowhere To Hide" through to the ultimate finality of "A New Hope", 03 A Trilogy Part 2 is a mind-blowing exercise in complex but melodic Progressive Metal that won't only give your brain a work out, but also stimulate those of you into convoluted crime narratives as this truly is the living, breathing essence of adult entertainment. An engaging experience indeed.