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I live pretty close to the city where Malpractice originates from and thus heard about them years ago in the 90's. Then they seemed to disappear, until I went to see a Tarot gig in the neigbouring city on May 13th 2005.
My surprise wasn't little when I saw Malprctice open for Tarot. I wasn't familiar with the new material of this prog metal band, but on stage they did decent job and made an impression on me with their tight performance, even though I remember thinking that they could have paid more attention to the overall sound and mixing. Propably it was more due the small venue, where they had to play on the tiny bar stage rather than on the main stage which was filled up with huge amount of Tarot's gear.
The music itself sounds like melodic, middle tempo heavy metal with plenty of proggish influences, like more complex song structures and guitarwork. Also a couple of catchy choruses have made their way into some of their songs and also more side-taking and criticizing lyrics like "The Industry" will fit well in the proggish image.
Since seeing them live I found out that they were bound to release their sophomore album "Deviation from the Flow" on November 2nd, after 7 years of silence. Unfortunately it hasn't reached my player yet, Iv'e only heard a couple of songs besides the live gig.
I read from reviews them often been compared to Dream Theater of Evergrey, but IMO they aren't too close, but rather different. First, they use two guitars (Joonas Koto, also in
To/Die/For and Markus Vanhala, also in
Omnium Gatherum) but no keys which alone is a big difference and the singer Mika Uronen has a very unique voice. Playing for years in other bands and projects has brought the necessary routine and it shows out in the band's playing. All this brings them a style of their own and if reminiscences to some prog bands may occur, one cannot say they are quite similar with any existing band.
Malpractice home page:
http://www.malpracticeband.com/
Some reviews:
DPRP - The Dutch Progressive Rock Page ( 8.5/10 )
Pitfather (**** ½)
Sea of Tranquillity (**** ½)
Metal Express Radio (no rating)
Ytsejam.com (**** )
Sorry, didn't find any samples, if anyone does, please kindly link in this thread.