Andromeda
II = I

March 2004
Released: Marc, Century Media/New Haven
Rating: 3.5/5
Reviewer: Anders Sandvall

Andromeda were formed in 1999 by the young guitar virtuoso Johan Reinholdz, but the debut “Extension of the wish” was postponed because Johan couldn’t find a suitable singer to his band. Finally the record company New Hawen Records (War Music) came with the suggestion to use Lawrence Mackrory (ex-Darkane) as a singer. The recording of the debut began in 2001 and was also released the same year, but the search for a singer continued because Mr. Mackrory was only a session singer, not a permanent member of the band. The searching for a singer ended when the keyboardplayer Martin came up with the solution to use his old class-mate from Academy of Music in Sweden, David, as a new singer. At the time the bass player Gert Daun left the band so Johan is taking care of all the bass playing on the album. After this album Andromeda has a new bass player, Jakob Tanentsapf.



The recording of II = I took 10 months and was produced by Martin Hedin, he has done a great job producing. The production and soundpicture are realy good.



EXTENSION OF THE WISH sounds a bit more hard than II = I does. There is also a bit more vocals on the follow up, but it’s still the same complicated, technical, tempo changing music as before. Everyone in the band has the opportunity to show of their skills on their instruments. Johan is taking a big part of the soundpicture where he shows off his amazing guitarplay. David impresses a lot on vocals compared to Lawrence on the debut, because I think that Lawrence has a pretty weak voice and Davids voice fits in much better to the Andromeda sound.



How can you best describe what Andromedas music sounds like? I think that the music is proggressive with an incredible tempo. The songs are really strong and it’s metal on a high level. On the follow up there is 9 tracks. Unfortunatly I don’t have the lyrics and I don’t have any title of the songs,and I also don’t have any information about who has done the music/lyrics because I only have the promo. But on the debut Reinholdz was responsible for both music/lyric so I assume he is involved in the writing of the music/lyrics this time also.



It’s a very strong follow up. Very melodic/strong progressive metal, a bit calmer than the debut. The music is very well-played, if you want a lesson in how to play technical, complicated progessive metal you should check this out. Reinholdz can be satisfied with what he and Andromeda has achived on this record. He has a great potential of going very far in the future, he impresses a lot with his incredible guitar playing.