Guitarist Srdjan Brankovic hails from Serbia and happens to play in the biggest selling progressive metal band in his country. Alogia has 2 albums to their credit as well as opening for some of the biggest international acts like Whitesnake, Savatage and Apocalyptica. This is his first foray into the English language market, grabbing some of the better guitarists and keyboard players in the business such as Gary Wehrkamp (Shadow Gallery), Andrea De Paoli (Labyrinth), Richard Andersson (Time Requiem), Erik Norlander and many others across the board. With all the right musicians in place, Srdjan certainly put forth an outstanding debut 11 song effort with this project.

Nikola Mijic handles the singing on the bulk of this album, capably rising to the challenge of this neo progressive bombastic metal much like the early Dream Theater days with Charlie Dominici and Oliver Hartmann when he was the singer of At Vance. You will have ample opportunity to hear the solo work from Srdjan and his guests, as the man often defers the breaks to the keyboard players. Uplifting would be the best adjective to describe the songwriting and arrangement skills for Expedition Delta- as even the lyrics paint a positive outlook when things seem to be a struggle especially on two of my favorite cuts "Move On" and "Not Too Late". It’s criminal indeed that we’ve had to wait so long to hear this man’s abilities on non-Serbian soil, for all around Srdjan has the training and dramatic flair that most of his European contemporaries fail to carry for an album’s duration.

Time Requiem, Symphony X and TNT supporters should have little hesitation to add Expedition Delta to their new required listening bank. Let’s hope this is more than a one off situation, as I’d like Srdjan to expand this project into a possible full time situation.

www.myspace.com/expeditiondelta
www.progrockrecords.com

Composed by Matt Coe