DANTE – The Inner Circle

Originally formed in 2006, Dante is a five-man Progressive Metal band from Germany, and the seven-song, self-produced The Inner Circle is their debut album. The group (Alexander Gohs, vocals; Marcus Maichel, piano and keyboards; Markus Berger, guitars; Christian Eichlinger, drums; and Dennis Neumeier, bass) list themselves as fans of such Progressive acts like Pink Floyd, Yes, Neal Morse, and of course, Dream Theater.

Although The Inner Circle is self-produced and financed, you wouldn’t know it by looking (and hearing): the production of the album is very good, and the CD cover and 20-page booklet are quite nice, with lots of attractive art and photos contained within. Aesthetically, a nice job was done here.

As mentioned, The Inner Circle has seven tracks. Not many actual songs, but since this is a Progressive Metal disc you just know it’ll be long, and with a playing time of one hour and four minutes, each song averages out at around nine minutes in length. Indeed, only two tracks (“For I Am” and “The Giving”) are under eight minutes long. Album-closer “The Taking” is nearly 18 minutes long, so although Dante might be new to the Progressive Metal scene, they write epic-length songs like veterans.

Luckily for listeners, though, Dante makes sure fans aren’t bored while listening to their magnum opus: the album moves along well with no real lulls, with the band throwing in the usual assortment of time changes, lengthy guitar solos and riffs, keyboard and piano passages, and the orchestral arrangements that all Progressive Metal fans really like. But at the same time, there are no bass solos or monotonous spoken-word parts that drag other Progressive albums down. Dante gets in, makes their point (even though it sometimes takes a long time to do so) with a fair degree of heaviness, and then moves on to the next song. The Inner Circle might be a long album, but it doesn’t seem overly-long, even after listening to a 10-minute song, a pair of eights, a nine, and an 18-minute tune.

From a talent standpoint, Dante gets the job done: everyone is really good at what they do. Gohs is a very effective – although not amazing – vocalist, and Berger tosses out flashy guitar lines, riffs and solos with ease; “Not Like Myself” shows off his skills to good effect. The keyboards and piano of Maichel aren’t flashy, but they complement the songs nicely. The orchestration is nicely arranged too, although there’s not a lot of it.

Fans of Progressive Metal will probably enjoy Dante’s The Inner Circle, but at the same time it’s accessible enough for more casual fans of the genre.