Threshold are one of Britain’s longest-serving progressive metal bands, with a history that stretches back to the late 80s. Threshold’s website is very keen to sell their new album as a resurgence for the band, a return to the studio after five years of silence with “the longest but yet most diversified release of the band’s entire career”. It’s clear that the band see this album as a chance to condense the lessons of their career into a definitive album that will conquer the airwaves and catapult them towards the dominant position of Dream Theater. Unfortunately, March Of Progress suffers from the most unforgivable sin of all in music – blandness.
My key problem with March Of Progress is that I can tell that the songs were put together and performed by people who knew what they were doing, but those songs don’t interest me in the slightest. Drab verses lead to weak choruses which lead to uninspiring solos. The singing isn’t much cop either; Damian Wilson can hold a tune reasonably enough, but his vocals sound sterile, like they’ve spent too long in various effects packages and lost the emotion that they were initially imbued with. The band didn’t really need to boast of this being the band’s longest release, either – you’ll definitely notice the 70 minutes of various mid-tempo tracks crawling by. The album really suffers for not having even one track that really grabs the listener. Just one song with enough speed or power to break the procession of so-so tracks would do wonders for this album’s listenability; the album as it is just comes off as monotonous and hard to pay attention to. ‘The Rubicon’ is a clear example of this: it starts off promisingly enough, but I doubt that you’ll still be feeling good about the song ten minutes later when it finishes.
March Of Progress isn’t a completely negative experience – ‘That’s Why We Came’ stands out as one of the more interesting songs because the band drops out of mid-tempo mediocrity in order to produce a pretty nice ballad that hops between acoustic and electric sections. It also contains some of the best vocals on the album, but it’s just not enough to redeem the rest of the tracks.
Basically, if you’re painting a masterpiece or performing keyhole surgery and want some progressive metal-flavoured noise that will fill the silence but won’t distract you then March Of Progress is designed for you. But if you’re planning on actually listening to the music, I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed.
Threshold’s Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/threshold
Nuclear Blast’s website: http://www.nuclearblast.de
Bottom Line
Progressive metal that really doesn’t seem to have much ambition. Try Aeon Zen for a band with a similar concept, but much better execution.
You seem to have some serious problem with your ears. And the fact that you mention dream theater proves how poor is your approach to a band that NEVER did anything barely similiar to them.
August 24, 2012 at 23:24
this is the only poor review I’ve seen of what is an amazing album. You sir, are an idiot.
August 25, 2012 at 08:57
I’m afraid that the reviewer has no musical taste whatsoever (some people have two assholes instead of ears, but they still used them to judge music).
A biased, incoherent and simply stupid review. Did the person even listen to the album? Nicholas clearly doesn’t know anything about music and should stop writing reviews. Please, I urge you to.
August 25, 2012 at 16:40
Threshold fans are delicate sorts, aren’t they?
August 26, 2012 at 08:47
Cmon, you even put Dream Theater as tag. Noob!
August 26, 2012 at 09:47
Three completely redundant retorts right there. Nothing to engage with, nothing further to be extracted. It’s a perfectly well-written review.
August 26, 2012 at 09:48
You come up with a few interesting points in your review, that would deserve to be discussed further if the rest of it wasn’t obviously condescending. Or is it your frustration talking ?
August 26, 2012 at 15:09
Christ, I wasn’t expecting this to attract so much venom! When I review albums, the key questions are “Am I enjoying this” and “Do I want to listen to this again”. Neither of those were satisfied by this album for me. If you enjoyed it then that’s awesome, I’m glad you did. But I didn’t, so what would be the point of me saying I did?
August 26, 2012 at 18:57 OneMetal Team Member
Dear Mr. Reviewer,
I am not defending the fortress of “my beloved idol” (yes, I have been a Threshold devotee for quite some time – but I was VERY skeptical about their future after Mac´s departure). It is absolutely unimportant to me that yours is the only negative review of March of Progress album I have read do far (the others are about to come, I´m sure), “The Majority” approach may be very misleading sometimes (even Threshold themselves dealt with this topic many times in their lyrics) and “majority-views-cemented-arguments” are no arguments for me. My personal enjoyment has always been the most important aspect for me (as you say it is for you) and I don´t care if the others don´t share my opinion (this happens to me very often, I´m a 45-years-old father of two children working with much younger people with whom I have almost no interest in common, a rock guitarist playing his instrument for more than 30 years – with my preferences firmly rooted in the good-old-hard-rock-era, which transforms me into some kind of dinosaur even within today´s musicians´ community). However, when you attempt to write a review of an album next time, try to follow the steps as per the following list (this advice is completely free of charge):
1) pull your head out of your arse
2) clean your head thoroughly – while paying special attention to EARS (the main body organ primarily intended for perception of sounds, you know…)
3) repeat the procedure as per point 2 until you really feel a difference between your new status and that preceding point 1
4) listen to the music you are about to review (but beware of the results, as they may turn out to be very surprising for you)
And if the only criterion you employ to assess the music is the speed/intensity of snare drum hits (“mid-tempo problem” mentioned twice in a relatively very short review makes me think so), you should really try something else (fishing, breeding rabbits, adrenaline sports). Music seems to be too complex matter for you (perhaps no one told you until now but there are such things as compositional structure, harmonic layering, arrangement issues, balancing all the components mentioned with melody…)
Yours sincerely
Karel Novotny, The Czech Republic
August 27, 2012 at 07:55
Awful review… not because you don’t like, it – that is fine- but because you suggest ‘I’ (the listener) won’t – review the music, not what I will or won’t like.
As far as the music is concerned – I wonder if you have ever heard a Threshold album before or did you any research into the band’s 20 year history? From your review, I doubt the answer to either of those questions is ‘yes’.
August 27, 2012 at 07:57
Hello,
is it a common practice here to immediately remove comments which are not positive towards the “local” reviewers ?
Karel Novotny, The Czech Republic
August 27, 2012 at 08:26
Nicholas, you’ve really pissed Threshold’s friends off ;)
I do love it when people sling words such as ‘biased’, ‘poor’ and ‘incoherent’ at a review they don’t agree with. At the end of the day, we try to make reviews as objective as possible, but we’re only human and if we think something about an album stinks, we’re going to tell people about it in as neutral a manner as possible. Unfortunately not everyone will agree with what we say, but telling a writer they’ve got cloth ears is a really unintelligent argument.
August 27, 2012 at 11:50 OneMetal Team Member
I am a Threshold fan, I’ve listened to all of their albums and seen them several times live. Unfortunately I fully agree with the reviewer. This album is an utter failure. It is so boring and unimaginative that I could’t finish even one song before skipping it forward. I wish Mac never left the band. RIP Threshold. It’s time to leave the music scene.
August 27, 2012 at 15:40
As a reviewer you suck.
Threshold is a legendary progressive band and this is their best album.
To give it 2/5 indicates ignorance about the genre and lack of musical taste.
It’s clear you dislike prog rock so it’s certainly unfair to review prog rock albums as it would be if i would review a black metal album.
Threshold’s new album is absolutely amazing and time will show how wrong and clueless you are.
So long.
August 27, 2012 at 18:50
Okay people, I think it’s about time for a reminder of the difference between opinions and facts.
Just because Nicholas didn’t enjoy this album and you folks did doesn’t make his opinion ‘wrong’ and your opinions ‘right’. Karel Novotny touched upon this briefly in his first comment, before he plunged headfirst into the same well of unfounded assumptions and ad hominem attacks that the rest of you seem to have queued up to dive into as soon as you heard that someone out there didn’t think the same way you did.
Rob: At no point did Nicholas compare Threshold’s sound to Dream Theater’s, he simply said that the band were hoping to achieve a similar status. Nor is there anything wrong with his ears, although apparently the same can’t be said for your level of reading comprehension.
Grace: Making an assertion about somebody’s level of intellect based on the fact that they hold a dissenting opinion about a subject is rather prejudiced, don’t you think? Makes about as much sense as saying that “Gingers have no souls”.
Daniel: Again, you made the mistake of assuming Nicholas to be mentally inferior because he doesn’t like something that you did, only you go on to make your own intelligence seem questionable by calling the review incoherent (if it was so incoherent, how did you grasp its general thrust so easily?) and biased (yeah, actually, members of Threshold kicked over Nicholas’ sandcastle at the beach when he was a small boy, and he’s never gotten over it. Come on, people).
Elvin: Nice bit of passive-aggressive commenting there. If the review is so unworthy of discussion, why are you bothering to leave a comment? I think you’re venting some frustration of your own there, sir.
Andy Barnes: No amount of research would change the fact that Nicholas found this particular release uninspiring, in much the same way that reading this review hasn’t changed your opinion that March of Progress is a good album. The difference is that Nicholas hasn’t come to your manor calling your taste into question for enjoying it – he just posted his thoughts, and left it there. It’s you and the other Threshold fans commenting here who are so apparently insecure in their own tastes that anything which isn’t an unequivocal validation of your own opinions is met with bile and hostility. Not healthy, folks.
Karel Novotny: Of course it’s not normal practice to delete critical comments, otherwise hardly any of the above thread would be showing up at all, would it? Many thanks for your condescending bullet-point advice list – I’ll make a note of adding it to the team forum to ensure a Threshold fanboy-approved level of reviewing nous in the future.
Metala: Hope you’re about ready to be excommunicated by the Threshold faithful there, buddy – they don’t seem to keen on dissenting opinions!
Jordan: It’s ‘clear’ that Nicholas dislikes prog rock, is it? So, how would explain the fact that out of the 31 reviews and interviews Nicholas has written for the site, the vast majority have been about progressive and power metal bands? Oh, wait – you didn’t know that, did you, because you made the same mistake that seemingly everyone else on this comment thread did – you got butt-hurt because someone didn’t like Threshold as much as you do, and instead of doing the sensible, adult thing of realising that not everyone shares your opinions and going back to enjoying the album as you were before, you decided to get petulant about it and start flinging insults around the place.
To you all – everyone that writes for this website is an unpaid volunteer. Every single member of staff writes in their spare time, working around their jobs, their education, their families, and their ‘real-life’ commitments, and they do it because they love music. No-one here has any agenda against or for any band, genre, label or subculture. In fact, each writer chooses which albums they want to review themselves, usually in the hope that they’ll be picking up an album that they enjoy so they can promote it to others. Not every review is going to be positive, because that’s not how objective criticism works. There’d be no point having a scoring system if we slavishly handed out five out of five reviews out of fear of offending people’s delicate sensibilities.
So, you can roar your head off about how Nicholas shouldn’t write reviews or that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about as much as you like, and I’m just going to go on largely ignoring it as the background noise that goes on just about everywhere on the internet where people are allowed to post comments. Nicholas’ contributions to this site have been of high quality, and his knowledge of and appreciation for the genres he chooses to cover are beyond reproach. If anyone wants to argue the point further, feel free to do so if you’re able to without resorting to personal attacks, making up imagine personality defects that you think explain why his opinions are different from yours, or generally sounding like a toddler having a tantrum.
Otherwise, you could just go and listen to March Of Progress and continue enjoying it without getting so bloody worked up about the one person you know who didn’t like it all that much.
You know, just a thought.
Phil Whitehouse – OneMetal.com Music Editor.
August 27, 2012 at 19:27
YAY FACT AS OPINION DIVS!
*cough* Sorry about that. Just dropped in to point out to Karel Novotny – all comments are moderated pre-publication, but, as you will have seen, we do usually approve everything good OR bad; it’s purely a spam-fighting measure. Don’t let facts cloud your righteous ire though, eh?
August 27, 2012 at 19:51 OneMetal Team Member
GRRRRR! Bad man no like album what I likes lots and lots. WASH YOU EARS OUT BAD MAN! My ego so delicate I shout at you “Your head is in your bum and you have no taste”. Love from Dewie, aged 12 and a half.
August 27, 2012 at 21:16
Who are Threshold?
August 28, 2012 at 06:35
@Philip Whitehouse
Thank you very much for publishing my opinion!
I don’t take anything back.
What you don’t understand is that if someone says he hates pizza, that’s strange for most people.I am not going to force you to eat it :)
Threshold’s new album is like that.If you “surf” the internet you will find that most reviews are more than positive.
August 28, 2012 at 12:22
@Philip Whitehouse
Also i would like to point out that having this person as a critic for progressive metal/rock albums,is probably a strategy for creating controversy (more traffic..).
Denying this would render you bad at your job at picking an experienced writer who’s opinion matters.And it matters when it’s not only based on personal flavour but is more objective and trustworthy.
In any case, in this internet driven world we all live in, bad reviews can destroy a band, and this is not acceptable.
The internet is getting stronger and people know it.
Bye bye now.
August 28, 2012 at 12:37