Equinox is a French symphonic progressive metal band that released its debut album "The Cry of Gaļa" in the summer of 2014. It's an album dealing with topics like the earth, ecology and our origins.
As for the line-up, the band is consisting of musicians with many years of experience, which you will definitely hear while listening to this record. These guys are skilled and play their instruments very well. The compositions are solid, the vocals always on tune and there are some nice solos and melodies here and there.
Unfortunately, Equinox stay quite simple when it comes to their style: The album as a whole sounds pretty basic. The opener "Moon and Sun" sounds like something Epica would put at the beginning of a record. There's two obligatory power ballads and the whole rest sounds pretty flat, lacking any real highlights; I'm talking about moments that surprise the listener in some way. In terms of songwriting, I feel that the band stayed within its comfort zone and that's what bothers me the most. All members have released several albums already - I would have wished to hear more eagerness to experiment. The best song on this album is the cover of "The Show Must Go On" originally performed by Queen, but only because Queen have done a great job writing it.
On top of that, the orchestrations aren't well placed and kind of get lost, and to be honest, the choir harmonies sound boring. So in a nutshell, neither the symphonic nor the progressive side of Equinox are really well-made.
To sum up, "The Cry of Gaļa" is a decent album as a whole, but I could easily name numerous better symphonic progressive metal records and as many progressive bands that actually try out new things and or at least play classic symphonic prog a lot better than Equinox do.
