Short Reviews [Intelligent Music Project - 2021 - "VI: The Creation"]

Even those who have yet to come across this series will understand it is a project as opposed to a band and is the sixth album to date. The person behind this is Bulgarian businessman Milen Vrabevski, MD who provides all the material, and orchestrated the parts undertaken by the Bulgarian Symphony Orchestra. Apart from drummers Todd Sucherman (Styx) and Bobby Rondinelli (Rainbow, Black Sabbath) all the musicians are local and then Milen has brought in a series of world-renowned singers. This time we have Ronnie Romero (Rainbow), John Payne (ex-Asia), Carl Sentence (Nazareth) and Richard Grisman (River Hounds). Some of these guys have been involved in quite a few of the albums to date, and for Payne this is his fourth. This is designed to be an uplifting album, to take listeners way from the world outside. The digipak clearly details who performs on each track, and the cover artwork is the same as with the other five, just with different colouring and details. The issue I can sometimes have with projects is that there may be lack of continuity within the album itself and that is something I feel with this one. Taken individually, the songs are very good indeed, with the ballad “Listen” (sung by Ronnie) an absolute standout, but somehow, they just do not work together as a whole. There are times when the album is far harder and heavier (although always melodic) that I would expect, and instead of providing a good contrast and dynamics with other material I instead found it off-putting and not working as how was obviously intended. However, I have noticed the more I played this the more I enjoyed it as a whole and the lack of continuity did not concern me as much, so possibly this is an album which needs a great deal of listening to, to get the most out of it. All the vocals are world class, as would be expected from those involved, and yet again Milen has delivered an album which is certainly worth investigating by those into melodic rock, although I am not sure yet if it is essential. Time will tell.