Regardless of how much I like progressive music, especially metal and old-man's rock, I will seemingly for the life of me never ever get over the numerous generic, uncreative plastic bands that will always keep trying but never succeed. Yet of course, they're still calling themselves progressive, developing bands. The hurtful truth however is that they're standing dead still, considering both sound, variation and song-writing. Day Six is another one of those thoughtless bands without any form of originality or any other appealing factors but got picked up by a pretty big label anyhow. I'll be nice and say that this band don't suffer from lack of talent or such, since you obviously need the know-how to play this kind of music. The questions that remain are however; Is it deliberate? Is this that appealing, that Day Six actually can make a name for themselves? Nah, don't think so.

Opening act Massive Glacial Wall more or less confirms and summarises what I've just stated. Riffs without any kind of character, though with a very dark overtone sets the album off. The vocals flows okay and tries to create a dark and philosophical mood through lyrics about global warming which interests me as much as watching grass grow does. A complete waste of time in other words. It should in all fairness be mentioned that the following ballad Lost Identity is among the few strong tracks on The Grand Design. Grey and boring melodies are suddenly swapped with strong guitar-work and nice vocal-lines only interrupted by an awful saxophone-solo and a bass-solo that could've been drawn straight out of Dream Theater's The Dance of Eternity. Otherwise, the quality-ridden moments comes here and there like on the thorough cool guitar-solo on Castle Gandolfo as well as springy parts on the 16-minute obligatory epic Inside. Progressive metal fun fact number one: No records can be considered progressive unless they contain at least one song that clocks in for a double digit amount of minutes.

The Grand Design continues alternating between something mystical and slightly mighty stuff that of course leaves some positive spasms, and the almost provocative predictable and obvious which is just too distinct to be avoided. The negative pools flows over and runs in swift streams in other words, and as we all know, it's incredibly annoying to get your feet unnecessary wet. All in all, there's basically nothing that indicates that you should clutch this with your greedy claws immediately. It has its moments, like everything else, put doesn't stick out more than a tiny firecracker in a company of spectacular fireworks.