Lies Bleeding The Blind is the second release from this Colombian power metal band. Their previous album, Path To Glory their debut, was released some 4 years ago and I'd all but forgotten about them. That album was a decent album and featured Onward's Michael Grant on vocals. This time, with a new vocalist (Diego Gomez) and a production and distribution entirely financed by the band themselves, Legend Maker presents us with Lies Bleeding The Blind.

The music of this band can be described as power metal with progressive elements and has similarities to bands like Symphony X with it's mix of chunky heavy guitars with very technical passages and Dream Theater with it's abrupt and very technical tempo changes. All the songs feature great epic sounding intros and the beginning of each track slowly builds in mood and energy but the one thing that seems to weaken almost every track are the vocals. Their new singer has a good voice with a good range and is very versatile with both power metal and more aggressive metal styles but his vocal delivery is totally out of sync with the rest of the band and there's so many instances where his attempts at hitting high notes results in some horribly off-key singing. I tried, I really tried to give this vocalist a fighting chance, but even after 3 or 4 listens, I still don't care for his vocal style, delivery and melodies for the choruses to the songs. Alright now....off to talking about the one great thing about this band, the music and the musicians playing it. There's lots of great ascending Malmsteen style leads, great riffs, lots of tempo changes and lots of instrumental guitar and keyboard passages to really show off this band's talent. Orchestrated keyboard sounds and piano accent most tracks and the band manages to create a great sense of drama with their approach and arrangements to their songs. The 2 instrumental tracks, As We Begin In Blindness and Ficus allow the band to cut loose with the former even having a more of a thrash metal sound with the chunky guitar and fast double bass drumming. There's a few instances in tracks such as At The End (Millennium), Lies Leading The Blind and Labyrinth City where the band suddenly changes gears and pumps out some great fast riffs which really jump out and kick the songs into full force.

The production is O.K. with this album, but the drum sound is a bit thin and the mixing with some of the guitars is a bit rough and disjointed but given that this is a self-financed production, those minor flaws are not very noticeable. Musically, this is an improvement over the band's debut, Path To Glory but their vocalist needs to work on his style and delivery in order to be a real asset to this band. Overall, the band has a great sound and succeeds wonderfully in building up the drama for each song, presenting us with a mulitude of emotions both uplifting and aggressive but once the groundwork for each track is in place and the vocals begin, they become a distraction from the quality of the music instead of accenting and blending in. I really like the musical style of this band and if it wasn't for the vocals, I would've scored this album much higher. If they can sort out their vocal problems, they could be a great band on the progressive power metal scene.