Pagan’s Mind’s popularity has blown up in the past few years with many critics lauding high praises on their second album Celestial Entrance as well as receiving more than a few favorable nods towards the 2004 reissue of their debut Infinity Divine. Now they have released the always important third album, the one that determines the fate of many bands. Will their star continue to rise unabashed in critics and fans eyes alike or will this release be the first sign of stagnation within the group? I have all four of their releases, the original debut, Celestial Entrance, the reissue of Infinity Divine and now Enigmatic: Calling. With this release however I do not feel as if the band has stepped out at all from their sound found on Celestial Entrance which is a shame because the leap of improvement from the debut to their second release was phenomenal, I was hoping this would be repeated again. Instead they opt to play it safe and I’m sure that many people will embrace this cd and call it “Progressive Metal genius” but to me this is lacking in drive and inspiration.

I do not want the last paragraph to sound as if this album is a bad album necessarily because that would be far from the truth. Jorn Lofstad is a tremendous guitar player, his solos on Enigmatic: Calling are ones that would make many in the scene jealous of his abilities and his production job is impeccable. Nils K. Rue still gives a healthy and warm performance with his voice that sounds like he is singing through four noses, and the rhythm section of Stian and Steiner is solid, tight, and perfectly in tune with the music. I do enjoy the band’s approach to lyrics, their love for all things philosophical and science fiction give them an edge over other run of the mill Prog light groups. From this standpoint Pagan’s Mind is a band with stellar musicians and I want to stress this fact and get it in the foreground as much as possible. My complaints do not lie in the abilities of the bands members they lie in the songs themselves.

Take any song from this album, whether it is Supremacy, Our Kind, Celestial Calling, or The Celestine Prophecy and listen to them back to back with tracks culled from Celestial Entrance. The similarities in overall structure and feel of this new batch of tracks was so striking that I wiped my schedule clean for three hours and sat back and played both albums in a row without nary a break other than a quick bathroom stop or a trip to the kitchen to get some water. When both albums were over I tried to think back and see where one ended and the other began and for the life of me, I couldn’t/ Enigmatic: Calling sounds as if it were leftovers from the Celestial Entrance sessions without any hint of evolution whatsoever. Now, with all due respect to the band I can say that their “leftovers” (and I know that the songs on this release are anything but leftovers) are better than most Prog bands songs that took years to compose. However, and this is the main reason why the score will be considered “low” by the majority of the readers here, Progressive Metal should be about just that, progression. Because its lack of this, Enigmatic: Calling is a fair, respectable, yet all too safe of an album.