By having a look at the tracklist you can see that "Room V" is a concept-album, just like "Tyranny" (1998) was. In fact it's the second part of the story that started with Act I and II on "Tyranny". If you want to have further information on this very complex story, there is a video on the bonus disc which comes with the special edition of "Room V". On that video Carl Cadden James (main lyricwriter) tells the whole story and this is not the only reason to buy the special edition of the album. The bonus disc contains another 38 minutes of music (including the 24-minute long "Floydian Memories" which is a Pink Floyd medley) - so we have all in all almost 2 hours of music here! "Room V" thus is splitted in Act III and IV, both include 7 songs.

Act III starts with an instrumental song "Manhunt" which sounds pretty technical just as Prog songs should sound like. The real story begins with "Comfort Me", more or less a ballad-like song featuring Laura Jaeger on the female vocal parts. "The Andromeda Strain" is again heavier and sounds more 'proggish' and here we can hear the Shadow Gallery-typical 'choirs'. What I like very much about this band are the vocals. They do not have only one very capable vocalist in their band (Mike Baker) - almost every other member is singing in these choir-parts and this is very impressive. The next song, "Vow", is one of my favorites on this album. A very emotional song fitting very well to the context and the vocals are just awesome here. This is followed by two rather short instrumental songs and a third very short song which seperates Act III from Act IV. If you read the lyrics (which are basically about birth, death and grief) you should understand the 'split' here very well, but it would be just too difficult to explain the whole story here. Act IV begins with an instrumental piece called "Seven Years" and here the story continues, as you might have guessed, seven years later. While Act III is more or less the 'happy' part of this album, Act IV is rather about despair and this is also reflected in this music. Of course one cannot generalize this but you already get the impression of a darker part by the short interlude entitled "Dark". The next song "Torn" is also one of my favorites on this album. Yet again Mike Baker is able to bring lots of emotions to the song, which is by the wy, co-written by James LaBrie (Dream Theater). Now we come to my overall favorite song of "Room V" - "The Archer Of Ben Salem". I still don't know what makes this song so fantastic, but one aspect are definitely the vocals here. The song is build up like a dialogue between the protagonist of the story and 'the archer' (his enemy). Here we can enjoy Carl Cadden James' vocal abilities, as he takes the bigger part of the vocals (the archer) whereas Mike Baker 'plays' the protagonist. It is very impressive how Shadow Gallery managed to visualize the content of the story by combining music and vocals. With "Encrypted" and "Room V" the story goes slowly towards the end. The title track of the album is yet again one of my favorite songs - yes, you might have realized that there are many great songs on here. Starting rather 'proggish' again the chorus is sung by the whole band and in my opinion this is the best part of the song. The last song "Rain" is also the longest (8:59) and it combines more or less all parts of the album and Act IV ends here.

Even though all this might sound a bit confusing, it all becomes clear if you know the story and read the lyrics. "Room V" really is an fantastic album and I'd simply call it masterpiece. "Tyranny" already was an album where you hardly could find any weak song and I think there is no single part of "Room V" which doesn't fit to the album as a whole. The music and the production is flawless and the band get an extra point for this really touching story. Last but not least "Room V" features quite a couple of guest musicians such as James LaBrie (Dream Theater), Arjen Lucassen (Ayreon) or, as already mentioned above, Laura Jaeger.

What else can I say except: If you got interested in this album now - buy it! This is the highlight of the year (so far) for me.

written by Silence

Playing time: 75.34