'Shadow's Dance' is my sole Godgory experience. This is the band's 2nd album and after this, they have released two more. Godgory have death metal, gothic moods, thrash metal and shades of prog in their music. This causes both negative and positive effects.

Godgory's music is unbalanced. Death metal parts and melodic lead guitar work remind me of Edge Of Sanity and thrash stuff reminds of Megadeth. Prog felling comes from use of synths and some "unusual" timings, this is not "musician prog". There are 8 songs and they count almost an hour together. The songs are simply too long, usually with not enough variety in them. The opener works very well and it's a good song, long, but it goes on well. Second one is a slow uneventful piece, at least with a good solo part. 'Rotten in Peace' is a Megadeth-style thrasher (vocals imitate Dave Mustaine) and death metal song (yep, Edge Of Sanity style indeed). Guitar melodies are cool, but otherwise the song's quite empty. 'Leavetaking' returns to slower affairs, it's just too looooong and sounds empty... 'God's Punisment' is more thrashing again, with Dan Swanö style (he produced this in Unisound Studios) clean vocals, and is one of the best songs on offer here. 'Make You Pay' has extremely annoying talk-singing (no, not rapping), melodic speaking so to speak. Uh, it ruins the beginning, otherwise the song is okay (again, over 8 minutes). 'In the ocean Sky' one is an okay instrumental, which melodies keep the song flowing. The title track has this melo-talk again! The song itself is way too long, but has its nice moments, just as the majority of the songs do, but the majority also fail to impress wholly.

I accuse this for poor production job. Drums are programmed and they bring this cold, empty feel to the sound (in a negative way). The rhythm guitar is crunchy, fitting to more aggressive songs, but not into slower ones (guitars could be so much heavier in slower songs for much better effect). Of course there's acoustic and some other guitar stuff too, but nothing spectacular. Playing is okay, but guitarists deserve a mention for the work well done. Generally there's nothing flashy, even though of prog elements. There's 6 guys listed, but only 5 of 'em recorded this, so that explains a lot. I just don't understand why the drums were programmed by the drummer... The cover artwork is lame and eye-catchingly ugly.

This is not bad, just incomplete in many ways. The band have sought for their own kind of sound, but only partly they have managed to come out with some good music. The song material is simply too long at times, as only two of over 7-minute songs are good. Anyway, this is not a totally bad effort and well worth trying for all Edge Of Sanity fans.

Rating: 6- (out of 10) ratings explained

Reviewed by Lane
11/21/2002 15:45