Artist: Aetherius Album: All That I Need To Survive Label: Private Pressing Website: http://www.myspace.com/aetherius Reviewer: Paulo André

Track List: 1. Zero A.E. 2. Minding the Hourglass 3. 6 4. The New Way of Thinking 5. Hold onto Your Dreams 6. Evolve or Dissolve 7. In the Here and the Now 8. Rainbands Aetherius is a local Massachusetts progressive metal band who with this first album seems to be making a statement. "All That I Need To Survive" as a title sounds almost auto-biographical in the sense that so many bands can't make it over their debut or even make a release at all. I'm sure there are other meanings, but let's remove this bit out of the way at once, because this record is a very decent launch to this band's career. There's dark, there's heavy, there's melody. You wouldn't know judging by the intro track alone, "Zero A.E.", but as soon as we step into "Minding The Hourglass" we pretty much know what we're in for. We also understand that we're not in for a crystal clear sounding record but we forgive that. This is a band that is self-released and thus unsigned so as far as I'm concerned the points it loses for murky production it gets back for their independent spirit, will to record and get out there. The drums sound great, nevertheless, it's just the overall mix that needed to open up a bit. Did I mention every band member laid down vocals? Cool. There's no new ground broken here, to be sure, but if progressive metal leaning towards the fast and heavy yet melodic with a lot of great double bass drumming is your thing, be sure to check out this record. "6" and "The New Way Of Thinking" pick up right where the second track left off and they all smoke. Straight forward progressive metal with enough twists and turns to keep us occupied, interested and head banging at the same time. It's not until "Hold Onto Your Dreams" that we breathe a bit and the atmosphere the band creates with different ambient interludes is a nice change of pace. "Evolve or Dissolve", apart from its interesting title, throws a lot of Evergrey circa "The Inner Circle" vibe to the proceedings and let's not forget the epic "Rainbands" featuring guest vocals by Olivia Berka of Polaris. Hoping you got interested so far, I let you into this one cold. It's a fitting end to the record. Aetherius decided to keep a veil of mystery over them so there's no trace of band members' names. They are simply know as RMB, STB, DJG and GSM who, according to their MySpace are "the medium through which aetherius' abstractions are shared with the population". Haha. Right. But let's not allow this to deter us for a second. "All That I Need To Survive" is a great debut album. Let's hope it is indeed enough for them to survive. Band: RMB - Vocals, Guitars STB - Vocals, Guitars, Keyboards, Additional Bass DJG - Vocals, Bass GSM - Vocals, Drums, Percussion Guest Musicians: Olivia Berka (Polaris) - Vocals