SUBTERRANEAN MASQUERADE

Mountain Fever SENSORY RECORDS

Israeli seven-piece attempt familiar peaks in varied garb.

Prog metal has become a catch-all term that arguably doesn’t communicate much. It’s reasonable to label Israel’s Subterranean Masquerade in this way, but it doesn’t sum up everything they do.

Mountain Fever, the band’s fifth album, draws on the writing and playing of all seven of its expanded membership, resulting in symphonic metal rubbing shoulders with Middle Eastern rhythms and sounds in the opening couple of minutes of Somewhere I Sadly Belong, klezmer music suddenly dropping in the midst of in the title track’s classic rock workout, and theatrical vocals washing across the dark ballad The Stillnox Oratory.

Vocalist Vidi Dolev cruises chameleon-like throughout, shifting his delivery from James LaBrieesque dramatics to flashes that evoke Saga’s Michael Sadler, while occasionally summoning up death growls as in the very Opeth-like For

The Leader, With Strings Music. It’s refreshing to hear a different take on the genre and there are all manner of cultural, historical and artistic threads and powerful messages being drawn together on Mountain Fever as Subterranean Masquerade skilfully expand the envelope.