Charlie Dominici is off course the guy, who sang on the first Dream Theater album 'When Dream and Day Unite' back in 1989, since then he has been very quiet until he released the first part of his O₃ trilogy on his own label in 2005, the first part has been made available from InsideOut now.

Where part 1 only featured Charlie Dominici, a acoustic guitar and a blues harp, part 2 features a complete line-up with Charlie Dominici handling the vocals, Erik Atzeni on bass, Brian Maillard on guitars, Yan Maillard on drums and Americo Rigoldi on keyboards. Unfamiliar with the first part - wasn't even aware he had released it until I checked the facts - I can't tell much about the background for the events on this album.

The concept about an alcoholic and his (mis-)behaviour takes place in N.Y. and the storyline is supported by some cool progressive metal that surely has a lot in common with his former band, but also draws parallels to classic metal like Judas Priest. On a few occasions the style do tend to get too close to Dream Theater; "The Calling" is borderline ripping off "As I Am" from 'Train of Thought'. But for most parts its entertaining progressive metal with a good vocal performance from Charlie.

This is clearly a band effort featuring some hard and heavy progressive metal with some very cool guitar work from Brian Maillard and a very good production - what more can you ask for? Maybe some originality, but you can't have everything in life...

Check it out!