The Scintilla Project - The Hybrid

The Scintilla Project The Hybrid cover
The Scintilla Project
The Hybrid
UDR Music
2014
6.5
The Scintilla Project is an album that was developed as a tie in/based on a movie that carries the same name and is a collaboration between Saxon’s Biff Byford, Lionel Hicks and Anthony Ritchie both from Balance of Power on drums and bass, and with megaducer Andy Sneap, assuming guitar roles.
 
The whole project started a few years ago, while the movie was in development – it was actually released in 2014, and someone suggested to Saxon to write a song for it, so from that, the idea stem that maybe a whole “concept” could be done around it... so then the whole thing took a life of its own and grew into more than one songs, evolving into an extra-curricular activity and grew into a project that actually didn’t happen within the context of Saxon, but under its own “banner”.
 
For better or worse the style of “TSP” is still heavy metal, well, with all the fine gentlemen involved, it would be rather “weird” if it turned out to be anything else, but it’s let’s say more refined that the usual heroic Saxon fare, going for the most part for a more sophisticated approach. There are obviously the tracks that rock out more, but for the most part with “Scintilla” being a concept about the movie, the atmosphere, is very important, so mood is very important, so there’s a touch of “prog” here and there…
 
Not in the sense of Dream Theater prog, show off solo bits, popping up all over the place, but in a more traditional 70s manner, more orchestrations (in the form of background melodies that linger barely audible but are still there – keyboard like) and an overall more musical mood.
 
The movie, a science fiction thriller, is set deep underground in the wilds of a former Soviet state where strange genetic experiments are taking place. A war weary mercenary is hired to lead a company scientist to the secret underground laboratory and with his team of mercenaries to steal the research in the laboratory. Along the way the good people face dangerous militia involved in a bloodthirsty civil war, strange monsters lurking in the abandoned tunnels of the old Soviet bunker and finally they meet the scientist running the genetic experiments and her terrifying secret.
 
The eponymous track “Scintilla” (One Black Heart)” that opens the album is quite impressive… indeed, while songs like “Beware the Children” and “Permanence” with their muscular mid-tempo seem less impressive, but are still not bad, probably aiming to facilitate, scenes as incidental music (?) I do not know how many of the songs and which parts of them are used in the movie actually, but I know that in fact some are. “Some Nightmare” is slower and features a nice if not a little bizarre sounding – in the tone selection, solo. “Angels” is a rather modern sounding and somewhat dull and repetitive number with a bit of a riff that has a semi-industrial feel, but isn't that bad per ce.
 
“Pariah” is the next, “great” moment of the album. It begins slowly and it unfolds into a bit of melodic prog/power metal – Saxonesque (because of the vocals I suppose) hymn! “The Damned and the Divine” maintains a somewhat bombast and with its mid-tempo it sounds like a mix between Edguy and Saxon, weird as that may sound. It’s also not that bad even if the vocals are a bid borderline on this one. “A life in Vain” in comparison fails to live up to its predecessors, with only a decent enough chorus, which however sounds a bit derivative, from something else. Last but not least the completely unimaginatively titled “No Rest for the Wicked” wraps up the album with another slight blast of bombast, another nice solo and another quite decent chorus.
 
Well, overall, there are two pretty great songs on this album, a lot of decent, but “rather” weird sounding ones, that might make great sense if watched along with a scene from the movie, but might feel a bit awkward on their own as they do tend to feel a little repetitive rhythmically, which is not something I would completely expect from the guys from Balance of Power, really. Other than that, here’s nothing chiefly wrong with it, but I wouldn’t leave the dayjob, either, great for a bit fun at the side.