Voice of the Enslaved - Voice of the Enslaved

Blake Carpenter is a very busy man when it comes to projects including; Corvus Stone and of course his band, The Minstrel’s Ghost. Blake also now has a side project that is called, Voice of the Enslaved. The story of the album is about how this amazing paradise that was, is now corrupted filled with everything that they promised the citizens that can live their dreams, is just one big hoop of lies that the government and the corporation is a controlling brainwash and how they must survive to get out of the mess that they are in. You can imagine Blake almost as if he’s paying tribute to George Orwell and Ayn Rand of doing research behind the side project.

Alongside Blake who does the lead vocals, guitar, and keyboards, he brought help from Robert McClung (Telergy) on Guitar, Violin, and Sitar, Petri “Lemmy” Lindstrom (Corvus Stone) on Bass, and Zoltan Csorsz Jr (The Flower Kings, The Tangent, and Karmakanic) on Drums. Alongside who do the breaking news for the opening of the first piece are special guests including; Blake’s wife Terri, Troy James Martin, Elizabeth Martin, and Marty Dorfman (The Prog Doctor who does his own radio show on House of Prog called, The Waiting Room on Friday nights).

Like a film inside your head, Blake really brings a lot of ideas to the table and it is almost like lending a helping hand for a friend to see where they want to take the side project into. And not to mention on how the people they must struggle to survive of the government corruption. There are touches of a heavy symphonic middle-eastern ominous atmosphere (Apocalypse Now), energetic guitar riffs and solos (Watching You, Police State, and Idiot Box), and swirling advanced keyboard works along with a dosage of ascending melodies to fight for freedom (Revolution and Rich Man’s Dream).

Blake has really done his homework very well to show that what is in the storyline, that is really strong and powerful on what has been done wrong and the struggle to fight can be complex and difficult to survive by escaping from the brainwashing policies. There are reminiscent of bands like; Touchstone and the early Styx thrown in. And on Voice of the Enslaved, this isn’t just Blake, but his friends and his wife, bring a lot of his support by being a team and lending a helping hand on the project.

There are touches of Progressive Metal, Arena Rock, Electronic vibes, and of course, Middle-eastern music for the adventures on what is to come and what is about to happen next on each of the compositions that is on here. This is a wonderful concept storyline that Voice of the Enslaved is brought on here and Blake’s project is a knock-out.