There’s one thing I’ve learned in 7 years of knowing Jason Tipton and following Willowtip Records and that’s for every three or four great albums he releases that I love, there’s one or two that bore me to tears. This time around the band boring me to pieces is Italy’s Illogicist, a progressive death metal quartet, featuring the incredibly talented Marco Minnemann (currently in Necrophagist) on drums.

Technically, Illogicist are a very tight and gifted band, each member performs amazingly well on this effort, the problem with The Insight Eye lies in the actual song writing. Much like Gorod they play a style of music made famous by Death, Cynic and Pestilence; technical, melodic and heavy but, like their French label mates the music they’ve written just isn’t interesting.

With bands like Sulaco, Necrophagist and Capharnaum recording quality, catchy, technical and original material, for a band like Illogicist to simply go through the motions and create a sub-par effort is simply unacceptable. I guess Tipton was just trying to fill his "prog metal" quota for 2007, but this album simply fails to deliver the goods. Sure, it’s expertly played by a group of extremely talented musicians, but this album completely bores the fuck out of me. If it’s possible for there to be a "generic" prog metal album, this would be it, as the band use the same riffs hundreds of other bands have used before and don’t really offer anything new or interesting to the genre. It really doesn’t matter how technically proficient your band is, if you can’t write an album that pulls the listener in and makes them want to listen to it over and over again then all of that skill doesn’t mean a fucking thing.

Written By: Teufel