SUSPYRE -

SUSPYRE - A GREAT DIVIDE - NIGHTMARE  
This is going to be an unconventional review. The band’s music and instrumentation has certainly made sure of that. Here is the dilemma. Suspyre’s new album, quite appropriately entitled A Great Divide, is one of the most conflicted albums ever driving divisive and opposing impulses in the listener. In effect, there are two bands at work here.
One Suspyre is influenced by Dream Theater, brandishes wave after wave of keyboards, employs saxophones and even integrates calypso music into its repertoire. There is enough there, right there, to abandon all hope and interest in the fusion band. The other Suspyre has some of the most proficient heavy metal ever, fantastic riffs, superb drumming, incredibly tight riffs and a superlative singer called Clay Barton. April In The Fall, The Piano Plays At Last, Alterations Of The Ivory and Blood And Passion belong to the list of songs whose cleansed and purified parts could have become part of one of the best albums of this year and next. On Blood And Passion the band’s singer comes across as a better and more fervent Hansi Kursch. When Suspyre decides to be metal, and only metal, there is no stopping the beauty and the onslaught.
What is one to make of such a band? - Ali “The Metallian”

SUSPYRE - WHEN TIME FADES... - SENSORY  
Reviewing When Time Fades... song by song with minuets intact is nearly impossible. The album is as varied and convoluted as the graphics, images, alphabet soup and digits on the album’s cover artwork. This is what The Metallian constantly reminds us that progressive music is, a relatively unique or original piece of music played in the band’s own time and tempo. Now, to be concise, plenty of passages on this 75-minute disc nod towards Dream Theater, but that is just the beginning for Suspyre, which goes into rock, techno-metal, nouveau jazz and the symphonic. With every instrument and the vocals being spot-on and the production abetting the group’s goals the band has quite probably achieved its definitive work. Unfortunately, much of the band’s heavy metal leanings are gone and buried given the album’s extreme indulgence. The Light Of The Fire is reminiscent of the band’s heavier moments, which were more vocal on the first two albums, but those days now seem firmly in the realm of history. Aside from that, this makes the album one hell of a mammoth undertaking - to make and to get into. - Anna Tergel