Hollow

Hollow

Between Eternities of Darkness

Rockshots Records

release: 6 December 2018

It looks like this was a full band in the 1990s, but nowadays it is just Andreas Stoltz as an ambitious one-person European-style traditional progressive power/heavy metal project. Is this really one person doing this? We all see one-person projects all the time and often they sound like homemade projects that are fun, but lacking in staying power or lacking in songwriting due to the fact that it is all just one person doing the work. If you had said that this is all one person, I wouldn’t have believed it. It seems done well and it does have some strong qualities. The production is good, and the instrumentation is good. It doesn’t sound like a homemade recording.

The music focuses on the singing and the overall songwriting. It is not big show-off stuff. The intention to have good songs that the prog fan can appreciate is very clear. Fans of prog metal should check out the singing. Mr. Stoltz (Sweden) is a crooner. I have seen that some people find a certain similarity to the crooning style of latter-day elder Bruce Dickinson. I would say that it is a similar crooning style as Dream Theater. At any rate, it is in the same general neighborhood of that crooning. I also find a certain nasal quality to the singing, too, which might be more of an acquired to taste for some people.

facebook.com/hollowsweden/