Progressive rock comes in a lot of different styles, with each band having a twist of the variations. From Finland comes Discordia, who are kind of a mixture of Yes, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, and Evanescence, as the male/female vocal harmonies are strong and commend a deep listen. Utopia Perfection (Millimally) is progressive in the sense that there's little to no sense of pop dramatics, although one can almost hear of what that would sound like in "Mystery Man".

It does seem at times that the group play with the idea of how it would be if they were a pop band, and that's something that has plagued a lot of prog rock bands for years. Fans will say "stop, just give us something twisted and trippy", and Discordia do this both vocally and instrumentally, but every now and then they fly across the poppy airwaves and fortunately both sides of their madness is evened out well. It's a very adventurous listen.
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Discordia is a totally new band to me, and must be for many others, too, since Utopia Perfection is their first album. But what a nice debut album the band has created! All the songs are very good which I find very rare these days. There are plenty of surprises throughout the 45 minutes or so. The music is rather tightly packed and the songs ain't long so you have a lot of things happening despite the strong sense of beautiful melodies. It feels like one has gone through some kind of a journey or a roller coaster trip after this most obviously very well planned piece of music.

The band themselves talk about their music as 'polyrock'. It can be understood since there are so many kinds of elements and approaches to rock and prog on this album. It's funny how ones attempts to categorize the music seem to fail after each song. Sometimes I don't even know if they're serious, but it doesn't matter, since everything here is exhilarating and sheer musical fun!

Riikka Hanninen, the female vocalist, sounds a bit like Annie Haslam from Renaissance. Beautiful voice. Tero Vaananen, the male vocalist, is more a rock singer with a very dramatic and raw sound. Both singers play well together, and so does the whole band. The arrangements are excellent and the playing energetic and precise, though Discordia doesn't seem to concentrate too much on technical perfection in dream theaterian spirit.

The first song, Foreseen, is one of the best prog songs I've heard for some time. And so is Slave Planet II. Like stated before, all the songs are excellent but these two are outstanding in their conception.

A highly recommended album!
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