I'm rarely a fan of this style of pseudo "progressive" metal—especially with such prominent keyboards—that's overly reliant on fairly basic, chunky rhythms and seems to be deemed "progressive" largely due just to bombastic songwriting and flashy soloing. But Sweden's Evergrey, at least on this album, manages to hit the mark for me—thanks in large part to the hard rock-styled emphatic, sing-along choruses that venture into slightly gruffer vocal territory.
I just recently pulled this CD out for the first time in years and was very pleasantly surprised—to the point where I quickly picked up the band's following two albums a couple of weeks ago. That being said, so far those albums are not as big and punchy as Recreation Day, so I still need to investigate Evergrey's earlier work to see how it all compares.
