The impressive Danish Intromental Management keep on bringing forward new and interesting quality bands. Antithesis is the latest band added to the Intromental Management stall. Antithesis was formed during summer 1997 in Cleveland, USA, by the two guitarists Sean Perry and Paul Konjicija. Later on they were joined by bassist James Lewis, vocalist Ty Cook and drummer Paul Kostyack. In December 1998 the band completed their self-titled debut CD produced by the band itself. In March 99, guitarist Paul Konjicija left the band, due to internal arguments. Paul was immediately replaced by the young and talented Allan Marcus, and the band intend to re-record Paul's leads on the debut album, as they already have to make adjustments to the album before re-printing it. The CD has 10 songs, while one is a short instrumental, with running time of 50 minutes. The songs range from being over 8 minutes to 4 minutes long.

What hits you first about this CD is the good production, which is done by the band itself, coming off hard- hitting and powerful. This goes to show you don't have to be on a major label with a huge budget to get a good production, and that the possibilities nowadays, even for independent bands to get a good production, are much better than, let's say, 6- 10 years ago. Of course, the result is that we should expect more from independent releases as well, when the possibilities of a good production, doing the job yourself, has increased this much over the last few years.

What we get here is 9 tracks of fairly up-tempo high quality hard-hitting technical power/heavy metal mixed with a nice portion of progressive metal. Overall, the songs are rather up-tempo, but some acoustical parts and passages create the necessary variation this music needs. The twin guitar attack of Sean and Paul is very good and entertaining. The guitars have both punch and depth, and the technical skills of these guitarists are impressive, pulling off great technical runs, instrumental passages, and superb dual solos. Guitar-fans will love this. The rhythm section of bassist Lewis and drummer Kostyack is of course also of premium caliber. There are a lot of time-changes and cool technical runs/passages, and the band is coming off very tight and precise, impressive! No doubt the band has found a great and suitable vocalist in Ty Cook. His vocals are mostly in the mid- register, and he does one hell of a job, being very varied, which is really entertaining and something that is usually sorely missed in these genres of music. The overall quality of the songs is very good, and I tell you this CD will grow on you after some spins. It does take some time to really appreciate the melodies, to notice and consume all the technical finesses, but once you do, this CD just keeps getting better and better. If you're a fan of well produced technical power/heavy metal and prog metal, and appreciate the best of 80s heavy/power metal, you will have to go no further than this. Antithesis is the answer. I rate this to 4 out of 5 points !