The Last Judgment For the X Games Judges

Since Travis Pastrana took the world by storm with the spectacle that was his Double Backflip in Moto X Best Trick back in 2006, my vested interest in the X Games has waned. Like Tony Hawk before him, Travis Pastrana, the new X Games golden boy, snuck out the back of the X Games after that Double Backflip. To be fair, FMX has always been Pastrana's self-proclaimed hobby, and Pastrana got the chance to breach new ground in recent years, namely with his new focus, Rally Car, without which the idea he tried to make a reality likely never would've been so much as imagined, but more on that later.

Last year, the behind-the-scenes actions by the people behind the X Games (apologize for that redundancy) made an affront to action sports fans everywhere by making moves to phase out some of the events that made the X Games what it is today, skateboard vert most notably. Without skateboard vert and it's related events (skateboard vert best trick and skateboard doubles), the Birdman would have been another lowly pigeon in the crowd, pecking at scraps, hoping to be noticed enough for people to keep feeding him those scraps. Shaun White's quest for a 1080, which is now, sadly, postponed at the very least due to the absence of skateboard vert best trick this year, would likely not have been as spirited as it was. They seem to quickly forget who the faces of the X Games were for the longest time: Tony Hawk, Matt Hoffman, Dave Mirra, Bucky Lasek, Bob Burnquist, etc. All but Dave Mirra have tunnel vision on vert.

And looking back at those initial couple years of the X Games that birthed my avid interest in extreme sports, Hawk's miraculous 900 being what got it all started for me, I can't help but mourn the death of those events that weren't the media darlings that others were. Skateboard vert doubles, with the duos of Tony Hawk & Andy McDonald and Bob Burnquist & Bucky Lasek, was exactly what the X Games is trying to push anymore: events that breed innovation, or are innovations themselves. Namely, there are the Big Air events and its sister event, the Railway Jam. Inline skating was always the unappreciated stepbrother of the other sports showcased at the X Games, but memories of the double backflip I witnessed all those years ago are still as fresh in my mind as any other watershed moment, such as Hawk's 900, Hoffman's 900, Metzger's Back-to-Back Backflips, Pastrana's 360 and Double Backflip, etc. Technicality seems to have been sacrificed in favor of watered-down disciplines that seem to, in most cases, take away the very essence of the sport.

Returning to the past couple X Games for a moment, at least Scott Murray was around to give me some hope, promising Double Backflips both years. His act has since grown stale, with him failing all three years, but he helped me bide my time, keeping me interested in the phenomenon that is the X Games. Though I've given up on you and was only pulling for you this year due to the drought of actual tricks being landed in the Moto X Best Trick event, my thanks to you for keeping me watching, guy-from-somewhere-out-in-the-boondocks. You, along with Shaun White and his pursuit for the 1080, were enough to satiate me.

But this year I was looking for something more, and promises were plentiful for just that. In the Skateboard Big Air event there were rumblings of Jake Brown trying a 900 on the quarterpipe, but each attempt at that failed, and we had a victory for Jake Brown that should have been sweet redemption but was terribly anti-climactic due to the first example of judging gone wrong with that ludicrous tie between him and Bob Burnquist that he ended up being on the better end of with the second tie-breaker. Burnquist was noticeably frustrated, and for good reason, because his run was much heavier on technicality than Brown's. However, it seems that the judges are giving the sentimental favorites brownie points this year.

No matter, tonight simply could not not deliver. BMX Big Air, Skateboard Railway Jam, Moto X Best Trick and a BMX Street event, the exact name of which I do not recall. What could go wrong?

BMX Big Air saw Dave Mirra robbed of a proper score with his wondrous No-Handed Corkscrew 720 Backflip because of something as pedantic as going off the 50 foot ramp instead of the 70. Robinson, the sentimental favorite due to his injury and his wife making it in just in time to see him in the event, won with a relatively underwhelming run, in comparison to Mirra's. Chad Kagy put it all on the line there at the end going for a double tailwhip on the quarterpipe, but failed, yet that is more than I can say for Robinson, no matter how much I respect him. These sorts of goings on would become commonplace tonight.

Skateboard Railway Jam was a collection of pretty bails, and an exciting couple minutes at the end with some truly impressive makes. Adam Taylor, a great young gun that fell just short of medal contention in Big Air, was shorted for some beautiful flip tricks. Way was Iron Man again, which was cool and all, but the sole run he managed to post without bailing was nothing spectacular, in my humble opinion. He gets points for calling out the judges on handing Brown the gold over Burnquist the previous night, on the other hand. All in all, a second straight disappointment, and the event that made me think things really were on a downward spiral that was inevitably going to get worse.

Moto X Best Trick nearly had a bronze medalist that knocked himself out of the competition on his first run. That right there is indicative of the debacle the event was this year. He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named did two straight dead airs for his runs instead of pulling out this never-before-seen trick we were hearing whispers about. Travis Pastrana loses control of his TP Roll trick and, after some teases of him coming back, blury vision keeps him from another attempt. Scott Murray fails twice at his Double Backflip, with the last attempt being freakishly close and even more disappointing. Charles Pages, like Pastrana, borrowed from BMX and went for a Decade Air on a dirt bike, but knocked himself out of competition with a crash. Paris Rosen did the same with the fabled front flip, which Pages could likely have tried if he was able to come back. Todd Potter was robbed by a horrid instance of double standards, with the judges not wanting a repeat of last year when Kyle Loza's squirrely run into the wall cost him no points, deducting enough points from his score with that beautiful Coffin Backflip for his run into the wall to make him settle for a bronze. A decision made because of fear of controversy was counter productive, with Potter's innovation being downplayed because of a hypocritical choice based on a technicality. Bilco, for the second time, was robbed of everything, including his dignity (or so I believe), with an Indian Air 360 landing him a silver because of the judges simply not acknowledging the trick for what it was, another true innovation, due to some unreasonable hatred for the 360 itself. And that leaves us with Loza, who, instead of doing what put him on the map and being the forerunner in trick creation, alongside Pastrana, went with a been-there-done-that run, winning gold with the same trick he did last year. Between that and him wasting his first run, I have mixed feelings about him, and an unconditional hatred for all the judges at the X Games.

Sadly, the event I wasn't even planning on watching, but caught anyway, was what impressed me most because of the skill level seen and the consistency from the judges. I have never been huge on BMX street as it's been interpreted the past couple years, but those guys put on a show in all three sessions, and even their bails were more intriguing than most of the ones seen in the other events tonight.

To be honest, I am not even sure if I'll be subjecting myself to the judging again with the next two days of the X Games to see the other competitions that interest me, namely Skateboard Vert.

This is what passes for entertainment nowadays?

As I neared the end of the list of Emmy nominations, I saw the category for children's shows and three shows were nominated: Hannah Montana, Wizards of Waverly Place and iCarly. Are you sure you don't want to add other impeccable shows like Tru Jackson VP to that list? If you didn't recognize that was sarcasm, this blog is not for you. Run along now.

What are those three shows to me? The subjects of a fun little, "Guess the cliche plot of the episode," game I like to play when there's nothing else on television to watch while I eat my quick lunch. For example, it took me all of 10 seconds to guess how one episode of Wizards of Waverly Place would play out, in essence. Brother invents magical pants called Smarty Pants, sister ignores his mentioning of dire side effects. And what else could this be setting up other than her using them for her own ill gains, ignorant to the side effects and, as a result, she suffers those side effects before the episode comes to an end. I should make a living as a psychic.

Hannah Montana's big decision between the movie star and the (bad boy) rock star, played up in commercials, could be seen coming from a mile away by anyone that'd even seen the show in passing, especially given the unrealistic ideas childrens networks like Nickelodeon and Disney seem to peddle (in this case, it was a subtle way of urging girls to avoid the bad boys in favor of the kind ones; such a choice of the nice guy is far beyond reality, as any honest to goodness nice guy will tell you).

Even worse, the shows are borderline offensive at times. iCarly seems to, at times, send a message that violence against your elders is perfectly fine and farking dandy. Two devilish little girls terrorized Spencer in his attempt to win a little girl a bike. They overturned his table, ruined his merchandise, sent him rolling out on his skateboard into traffic, etc. At first I didn't believe that iCarly was really portraying such acts as okay, or at least that it was so obvious, but that episode changed my mind on that subject.

I am one of those people that hates people going on about the, "Good old days," and how things were in their day, but I will engage in a little of it myself now.

Often, certain shows from our childhood are painted up to be something they are not by a mixture of nostalgia and the fact that we were younger at the time and thus the shows seemed to be of a higher caliber than they were. Yet I have revisited shows of my childhood and time and time again found myself deriving no less enjoyment from them. Sure, to be honest, there were a couple duds I watched regularly, but there were more hits than misses by a large degree. Even recent shows that were obvious remakes of those hits (Drake & Josh being the white version of Kenan & Kel, to put it bluntly and honestly) stand atop the crap heap that childrens' television has become. Give me my Hey Arnold, Kenan & Kel, Gargoyles, etc. and keep your Hannah Montana, Wizards of Waverly Place and iCarly.

Seriously, give me Hey Arnold and Kenan & Kel. Release them on DVD in America already.

Hello, Goodbye

Here I descend into a mini rant.

What drives people to wave like madmen, or madwomen, at people from the confines of their vehicles as they drive past them? Do you honestly think a person can register your frantically shaking hand or jovial screams and catch your face in that split second it takes for you to move on past them and out of view?

For that matter, never have I been waved, honked or yelled at from a car and recognized the person doing it (if I caught glimpse of their faces). Yesterday, in fact, a girl, undoubtedly years younger than me, and just as undoubtedly no one I knew, given the fact that I have absolutely no friends younger than me, waved and yelled maniacally at me, hanging out the window. Did this when I was walking to the library with my earbuds in, drowning out whatever she might have said. Based on her facial expression, I like to believe that she went from jovial recognition of a familiar face with a wave to go with to waving the notion off, quite literally.

Oh, and on the subject, when two people stop and talk to each other from their vehicles, someone needs to drive their car up between them and start talking to the people in one car or the other. Maybe that'd give them the idea and they'd stop that idiocy.

Continuing further, while I engage in such pleasantries to fit in, I do not see the reasoning behind waving to someone in a hallway, or saying, "Hello," in passing. What are you doing, waving/saying hello and goodbye? Could a simple head bob, or something less active, not suffice? Why do we feel this need to acknowledge that we're passing by someone we know, whether it be in a car or walking somewhere? Are we just trying to reaffirm that, yes, we have friends, and we see them multiple times a day, even if most of those times only add up to a minute, if that, a day? Because what does it accomplish, other than comforting someone by presenting them with a familiar face and the fact that, yes, people care enough about them to say, "Hello."

Don't even get me started on people telling other people to tell other people that they said, "Hello." And why, may I ask? Do they sulk when they don't hear you told them, "Hello," second handedly? Are you not a proper friend if you don't think about them enough to get it in your head that you should tell the person to tell them hello?

Honestly, keep your empty nothings to yourself. If you're going to tell someone, "Hello," one way or the other in these situations, make sure to add a similarly jovial, "Goodbye," for my sake.

Rant over.

Cynical? Yes I Am

Yesterday, in my endless search through a variety of thrift stores for a computer desk, I saw/heard something that struck me as odd: a man randomly walked up to a kid in the store, said, "Here's a present for you," handed him a quarter, and walked away. What was my first reaction, you may wonder?

Anybody here have Chris Hansen's number?

Minutes went by before I even considered that it was something such as, say, a random act of kindness.

Today, I still feel there is a good chance that guy was trying to get the kid to come with him, but in a more clever manner, making it look as if he was leaving the kid alone and, all the while, waiting for the kid to go after him instead.

Thought at first that it might be the writer in me trying to make some odd scenario out of a perfectly harmless one, like I did that one time when I opened a door into a little Asian girl's face at Tree's Hall at Pitt when going to Tae Kwon Do. Mom was lagging behind her daughter, I apologized, and her mother said, "Thank you." My immediate reaction?

Golly, she sure hates her kid. Thanking me for knocking her daughter in the face with a metal door? Brat or not, that's cruel.

People had to suggest to me that her mother might have been thanking me for my apology to instill in her child the need to apologize in such situations before I even considered it.

At least being cynical allows for some entertaining thoughts.

The Running Man

What is it about my body that makes it decide to get minor aches and pains whenever I decide to go jogging? Today, my right knee started acting up as I walked to the park for the morning's jog. Maybe that was just a sign of things to come.

After letting myself travel back in time to the good old days of midget league football by doing the same drill we did (up the steep hill, back down, rinse, repeat), I was feeling surprisingly good. Nobody cares enough about that joke of a park to bother trimming the tree, so I got pine tree branches in the face once I got up to the top of the little, yet steep, hill whether I ducked or not.

Continuing on my walk or, rather, jog down memory lane, I did two laps around the football field. Not long later, I felt I'd finish the trifecta by going up Suicide Hill, just like we did at the end of each practice. Feeling frisky, I wanted to see how far I could throw my water bottle. I'd done it before with disappointing results that made me feel like less of a man, so I wanted to best myself.

Terrible idea.

But it was good for a laugh.

As soon as I released the bottle, I knew it was a bad idea. In flight, it looked like the tab that holds the water in when you aren't drinking any came undone and water started pouring out before it made impact. Its impact, though, was the spectacle of the day. Down it came and burst like a frag grenade.

I kid you not.

Water sprayed out in a two foot radius and all that was left of the top of the bottle were teeny pieces of plastic. The bottom was mostly intact, but there was obviously no salvaging that bottle of water.

Tried the park's water fountain, but the water flow is depressingly low and the water tastes metallic. Gave up soon after because of lack of water, but not before finding another hill to climb (I wasn't tackling Suicide Hill without my water bottle, mind you).

Buy me some peanuts and crackerjacks, I don't care if I ever go back

Tonight, watching Josh Hamilton at bat in the first round of the Home Run Derby, brought back memories of making a point to watch the Derby when the likes of Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire were involved; you know, before the steroid scandals, back when I had respect for the game and enjoyed it enough to collect baseball cards. Wonder how much my half dozen or so Mark McGwire cards would run for now that his legacy has been tarnished so heavily; maybe that could work in my favor and make my former favorite baseball player's cards even more valuable.

Hamilton nearly made the sport relevant to me again. His performance was a storybook one. Out of the game for 3 years, the exten tof his trainin being going to the batting cages here and there. Dealt with his fair share of demons, most notably drugs. Came back without really having gone up against major league pitching prior. Having a lovable 71 year old goof of a pitcher for batting practice that pitched to him at the Derby. Being an MVP candidate.

It's a good thing that those tattoos of his would be too much a pain (literally) to have removed. Hamilton will alway have that reminder of the demons he bested there on his arms; try going back to that way of life when you wear the regret of that period of your life on your sleeves, literally. And I doubt he wants another tattoo gotten when high.

But, as my dad put it in a surprising moment of brilliance, as he joined me halfway through Hamilton's 28 homerun first round performance, "If the Pirates got him, they'd trade him the next day." Sad thing is, that's true. Following the Pirates casually through what I catch on ESPN and FSN (when they regretably change the subject from the Penguins and Steelers to the Pirates; yes, regretably, even though the first two are currently in the off-season, they still dominate the airwaves and for good reason), it has become clear to me that any player I see that makes a name for himself on the Pirates, or does anything positive on the team is as good as gone before the trade deadline each and every year. When Stan Savran discussed this on-end on Sportsbeat because callers kept bringing it up, I was not the least bit surprised. The Pirates do their best to run the team like the Steelers run theirs, by letting the high profile names go, all the while getting a great, unsung return for that departure. Yet, as is evidenced by the Pirates inability to even go .500 in any recent season, this simply is not the case. Mayhaps they are struggling just above obscurity now, like the Steelers were in their early years, and poising themselves for a breakout, once again like the Steelers. Doubtful.

All things considered, here's to you Josh Hamilton, for forcing me to stop and watch when you stepped up to the plate at the Home Run Derby. Ever since I became disillusioned with the sport of baseball and, as a result, stopped looking forward to the Home Run Derby and watching it almost in its entirety, no player succeeded in pulling me back in for much longer than a minute. You distracted me from my day (well, night) for a solid ten minutes, at least, and for that I applaud you. Here's to there being more people like you in this world. Um, I don't mean more people into drugs and the like, I mean people strong enough to face their demons and come out the better for it.

Assorted ramblings on my sin of sloth

When summer began for me, absurdly early given my being used to it starting in early June, it seemed like a small fortune of time in which to catch up on a number of things. Watch the show proclaimed to be the best television has had to offer recently, The Wire. Read those novels that my bothersome floor-mates in my residence hall kept me from making much headway in, like Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian (author of No Country for Old Men, the novel on which the film was based, for the ignorant masses). Fully appreciate the wealth of music coming out in this year of years. Force myself to get a refresher course on Japanese via Rosetta Stone in preparation for Pitt's gruesome Japanese course.

Most importantly, get my nose, and bollocks, to the grind stone with an extensive rewrite of my novel, then called Everyman's Memory, but now called Autumn and The Fall (meanings galore and not bland, unlike most of my titles, or a study in what not to do when naming a work [From Eve Till Dawn: The Human Experiment . . . long enough for you?]). Gave myself far too much to chew with that alone.

Good thing I didn't decide to try and make a worthwhile story out of my first novel (the aforementioned one with the ludicrously long title); in that case, I would actually need to scrap the entirety of the novel, cherry picking some of my darlings, massacring the majority of the characters (including myself; got my narcissitic streak from Stephen King, I guess), wiping away the shit smears I called symbolism (it is wrought with my so-called symbolism, like my character's name being Mephistopheles spelled backwards: Selepotsihpem, or, as my friend Charlie Kane called him, Selling-Pots-And-Pans), etc.

Autumn and The Fall was not much less daunting a rebuilding project. Two characters became, essentially, figments of my main character's imaginations. Another character that had endeared himself to me dwindled into obscurity and disappeared, a dully named, but not dull, character, Bill Adams, taking his spot and then some. My genre changed for the second time (was a joke of a science-fiction frame story, then was a pseudo literary mainstream story, and now is on its way to becoming a horror story). So on. So forth. Distractions are all they've ended up being. I've become the author I never was, wasting time tinkering with character names, titles, endless edits of everything I write. My story has been in park, stalled inches outside the starting gate, for the longest time. I find I have an inability to force another sentence out unless I get the go-ahead from my fellow Absolute Write forumers. By that I mean I want a better response than, "You have a way with words, but I am not exactly sure what the hell those words are saying and if even half of them are needful ones."

What's worse is that I went from improving, incrementally, with my novel's opening to moving back to square one with a clusterfuck of a start that is confusing and off-putting to readers. Guess you could say that's to be expected with writing that is entirely new and without enough polish to at least hide the blemishes instead of removing them entirely, but it still irks me enough for me to not feel guilty about taking breaks from writing so often.

Yet even worse is that I justify all of this with bullshit like, "I need a solid foundation from which to build, or all will collapse and fall apart," and, "What's ahead is only hazy to me right now, so by pushing on I'd only be toiling in pages of nothing happening as I try to pry some sort of inspiration out of my ass."

Maybe all of this would be okay if I had anything to show for it, even an appropriately tidied up version of the opening scene of my my first chapter, it only approximately 500 words, or headway in any of those other things I planned to get at. My Japanese knowledge consists of the basics that kids in Japan barely out of the womb probably already know: the numbers, yes and no, how to say my name, a handful of words I looked up to replace profanity in my vocab, et-farking-cetera. Due to my desktop computer and our Embarq DSL being the picture of unreliability, resulting in endless computer reformats and ages spent recouping the media I lost in the process, I have little more than three episodes of The Wire and some films to show for my media viewing of the summer. After plowing through Stephen King's Dark Tower series, my reading pace petered out, Peter Straub's Ghost Story now over a week overdue, the library's new policy of forgetting all your fines if you return your books on Thursdays between 5-6 PM only enabling me just like owning books such as Blood Meridian did (no hurry, I have time . . . I have nothing but time). I am just now getting around to listening to more than the essential albums of this year that I noted in my first blog post and will likely get back to the essentials when bands such as Porcupine Tree, Muse, Nightwish, Between the Buried and Me, and so on release their albums that will likely worm their way onto that list of essentials.

Also, after gaining the infamous freshman-fifteen (exactly), I wanted to work out and lose those pounds once again over the summer. But, with my headphones malfunctioning, and my dad not wanting to mess with sending them to Sennheiser for repair because he'd have to list his credit card number on the form you send with, and my earbuds only staying in my ears when taped to them, and me being without tape for quite a while, and constantly forgetting to get tape when we were out, and not being in much of a hurry to get it subconsciously, I have only just now started to do that. Went jogging once all summer. Would've done it at least one more time if it weren't for the week-long (thereabouts) block of rainy days that followed. Being the moron that I am, I forgot to wear sunblock that time, too, and got a slight sunburn that was enough to make the back of my neck sore for days.

What's happened to the days where I churned out a novel (though admittedly crappy, at least I made something of my summer) and novella (again, at least I reached, "The end") during the summer? Or the times when I was so driven to be healthy that I'd go out and run in the snow, as it snowed, and the wind almost prevented me from making any movement forward? I'm struggling to even work my way up to doing simple tasks, like filling out my application for student loans from Sallie Mae for the upcoming fall semester at Pitt.

Even the desire to have something decent my sister could read, since she's been pestering me about my novel, Autumn and The Fall, and how she wants to read it, died out quickly and I got very little of note done.

Someone needs to come along and give me a swift kick in the butt, or perhaps point your blow between my cheeks at what dangles between. I think that would send me the message, unless I happen to be like that guy on Sports Science on Fox Sports Net that managed to take a kick to the bollocks that would likely rupture an average man's testicles without even flinching.

Stream of Passion, The Flame Within: Arjen Lucassen's Birthchild Surpasses Its Father

The internet has made of us consumers impatient dimwits that get this strange sense of entitlement, not wanting to wait long enough for bands to even master their albums. Promo copies always find their way out before an album's release, whether it be a couple days or a couple months prior, and that was the case with Stream of Passion's The Flame Within.

Color me shocked (I was more than surprised) when I came along this tidbit of information: Stream of Passion was not a one-off project of Arjen Lucassen and the luscious, in more ways than one, Marcela Bovio. Lucassen left Stream of Passion on their own. This I did not learn until after giving The Flame Within a quick run through; I was in such disbelief at this wondrous aural onslaught coming from an Arjen-less Stream of Passion that I double- and triple-checked the fact of his departure. Here was an album that had only hit the net in the form of a promo copy with that damned voice-over making an appearance. I would say it made an appearance during all the good parts but that would be a lie because, while the parts it spoke over were good, the album was all good. Sure, you could say I was irritated by this constant reminder of what the copy I had on my hard drive, rather than in my hands, was, but The Flame Within was of a high enough caliber to make up for such shortcomings.

Nightwish recently parted ways with the soaring, operatic frontwoman, Tarja Turunen in favor of the more mainstream, streamlined Anette Olzon. Fans of the band were ready to make a Shish Kabob of Olzon before she even took to the stage or studio with the band, feeling the departure of Nightwish's distinctive voice would leave too big a gaping hole for anyone to fill. Olzon's debut with Nightwish, Dark Passion Play, divided fans, yet brought new ones onboard, myself included. Tarja commanded your attention, criminally overshadowing Tuomas Holopainen's tight, dense and, in a word, epic compositions; Olzon gave Tuomas' a chance to slip out from under Tarja's shadow, Dark Passion Play having the sound of a Hollywood movie score. None of this is a jab at Tarja, as I respect her ability immensely, but rather an explanation of how that hole Olzon was hired to fill was, to put it bluntly, a black hole that sucked in all the arrangements that surrounded it.

Similarly, Stream of Passion is liberated by Arjen Lucassen's departure. Arjen, like Neal Morse, and many others, plays the same note in all his albums and projects, except with a certain amount of flair. Ayreon, for example, is only worthy as a sum of its parts, its cast of vocalists and other guesting musicians making it worth a listen if only for the prospect of hearing all these masters of their domains under one roof, sharing one domain.

Marcela Bovio was one of Arjen's hand picked guests for Ayreon's The Human Equation, making my ears perk up more than any other female vocalist on the album. Naturally, Stream of Passion claimed a spot on my listening list with her involvement, not so much Arjen's. Embrace the Storm, the band's first effort, struck a chord in me, but it was, as I said, Arjen's tired old chord. Bovio took it places it wouldn't have gone otherwise on the wings of her voice, but I felt it was essentially a vapid, under-developed Ayreon side-project, little more. It had its moments. There were songs I kept coming back to, yes. And, no matter how often I came back to it, it never grew on me, instead dropping far out of the race for my listening time, more the more I went through it.

The Flame Within benefits from Arjen not being at the helm, over-complicating things. Here we hear Bovio without all the unnecessary frills; in the case of Nightwish, the singer overpowered the other instrumentation, and with Stream of Passion that issue is flipped, with Arjen's ambition hiding Bovio's centerpiece of a voice behind extravagant, petty instrumentation. Stream of Passion stripped the meat off the bone, so to speak, leaving only the basic supports there, completely bare. Almost a pop metal approach.

Due entirely to this, each bandmember shines in his or her role. Jeffrey Revet accents the songs with tasteful, restrained playing on the keyboards and piano, no differently than Steven Wilson's piano contributions with Porcupine Tree or Jordan Rudess' guest appearance on Wilson's solo album, Insurgentes (one of many performances that decimates the argument that Rudess' is incapable of adding an atmospheric quality like the keyboardists that preceded him in Dream Theater were said to excel at). Eric Hazebroek and Stephan Schultz trade off, each playing both lead and rhythm guitar, the end result being appropriate, self-contained solos and rhythm guitar, neither ever playing above the rest of the song, but falling in line with it while making their mark on it at the same time. Bovio has the performance of her life, giving the album the same sort of sensibility as, say, Amy Lee of Evenescence, but without sacrificing anything, clearly outshining the likes of Lee and any others that may be nipping at her heels. Her voice is layered when appropriate for properly impactful moments, provides equally appropriate accents, and rises to great heights as the music peaks.

Listeners should not go into this album expecting a layered approach, nor should they have expectations of a straight-forward, meandering piece of music. The Flame Within settles in cozily between the two extremes, only ever experiencing the slightest of dips as the album draws to a close, that dip a minor one barely worth mentioning and only consisting of a couple songs. All in all, it is worth it, if only for hearing that rare woman who seems at home in the prog and/or metal arena and has such range and boisterous pipes.