2005-08-04
Tim Donahue, a very gifted guitar player, released his sixth studio album on April 2004. The album, Madmen And Sinners, also puts on display Tim's talents on the bass and keyboards, but it is his partners that draw most of the attention, based on their reputation in the industry.
James Labrie, the vocalist in the album, is the famous singer of the great Dream Theater, and Mike Magnini, the drummer, is currently Annihilator's drummer and a former Extreme drummer.
I suppose I don't have to introduce the guests much, we've all heard what Magnini can do on All For You, the last album by the Canadian Band in which he plays, and James Labrie's vocal qualities are well-known, but who's Tim Donahue?
Well, he's a guitarist virtuoso that has been working solo since his career began, he released his first album at 1987 and since then he's been building his reputation as a fine progressive metal guitarist. Tim is very successful in Japan, maybe even than in his home country, the US., and that's why every album he released came out in Japan first and only then in America, and I'm not even referring to the two albums somewhere mid-way through his career that contained Japanese musicians alongside him.
The album Madmen And Sinners opens with a seven-minute track which could have been taken from a Dream Theater album, and with LaBrie is the vocalist you wonder "did I get a rare Dream Theater here?". The second track is a charming ballad in which Labrie sings alongside with an acoustic guitar and some church sounds, and it rolls through to the third track, My Heart Bleeds, which is a more upbeat song accompanied by some riffs who fit the progressive metal genre perfectly, but played wonderfully. The excellent guitar-playing continues throughout the album with tempo changes, keyboards to support the sounds and some church sounds that also contribute. All of the elements blend in LaBrie's voice harmonically. The album talks about the punishment of sinners, for example Feel My Pain tells the tale of a guy on the stake who asks us to walk the righteous path and feel his pain. There a number of times you can hear Jesus' name come up, including the track which is half English(the second half) and half Latin with Gregorian-like sounds. Midway through the sixth track, Children Of The Flame, there's a strange sample of the immortal sentence "Beam Me Up, Scotty", and it appears more than once on that track in case you're not sure you heard right. This combination of soft tracks with the acoustic guitar, upbeat tracks with fun riffs and church sounds as backing vocals continues till end, where the last track you get it all in a sixteen-minute package.
Bottom line, I feel it's a really great album, and no wonder it took three years to make it. I'm not shocked it topped a few charts in the far east last year, nor am I shocked about the praises and the stories Tim received for this album. Still, there's nothing like John Petrucci alongside LaBrie and you can feel it at some point on this album, taking nothing away from Tim's excellent guitar-playing. By the way, Tim recently said he's working on a new album which will include more Gregorian-like sounds than in here. We shall have to wait and see about that….
Nir Haviv
