ROSWELL SIX – Terra Incognita: A Line In The Sand (2010), MP3+FLAC

We featured the new ROSWELL SIX album as well as the 2025 reissue of their debut CD, and you need to hear the remaining album – the second, ”Terra Incognita: A Line In The Sand” released 2010 – to complete the trilogy.

ROSWELL SIX is not a band per se, but rather a group with revolving personnel organized to record album accompaniments to the science fiction novels of Kevin J. Anderson in his ‘Terra Incognita series’. The first of these albums, Terra Incognita: Beyond the Horizon, the musical complement to the novel The Edge of the World, was released in 2009, and featured music written by Erik Norlander.
This second installment, ”Terra Incognita: A Line in the Sand”, corresponding to the novel The Map of All Things, was released to coincide with the publication of that book on June 22, 2010. This time, the music was composed by multi-instrumentalist Henning Pauly, a talented Progressive rock artist and producer / engineer / composer at Hifi-ve Studios in Germany.
The performers are impressive, including Steve Walsh, Michael Sadler, Sass Jordan, Arjen Lucassen, Charlie Dominici (ex- Dream Theater), Alex Froese (Frameshift), etc. Musically ”Terra Incognita: A Line In The Sand” is pretty hard-hitting, at places bordering prog metal yet always with melody as a rule.

The album kicks off with a rather heavy prog rock song called Barricade dominated by the superb voice of Walsh and the well-played guitar melodies and solos by Pauly. Follow-up Whirlwind is also rather heavy and features the vocals of Sadler & Nick Storr (The Third Ending); a perfect combination for the dynamics of this track.
The Crown is the first track sung by Sass Jordan showcasing a quite powerful range.

Loyalty is the first ballad, sung by Sadler. It’s a great song: very melodic with a nice and subtle guitar solo. Then the band really kicks ass again with the metal proggy of My Father’s Son plenty of staccato riffs, a screaming wild guitar solo and the rather heavy vocals of Dominici and Walsh.

Then, Roswell Six shines at the end of the album because the last two songs are without doubt the absolute highlights. Battleground is an instrumental piece featuring heavy, diverse guitar parts, riffs and solos; the final song Victory you want to enjoy over and over again. This is prog rock at its best with lots of Saga-like parts and extremely well-sung passages by Sadler; a true gem and a worthy closing song of this amazing album.
Highly Recommended

 

01 – Barricade
02 – Whirlwind
03 – The Crown
04 – Loyalty
05 – My Father’s Son
06 – When God Smiled On Us
07 – Need
08 – Spiral
09 – Battleground
10 – Victory

Vocals:
Steve Walsh / vocals
Alex Froese / vocals and backing vocals
Nick Storr / vocals and backing vocals
Michael Sadler / vocals
Sass Jordan / vocals
Arjen Lucassen / backing vocals
Charlie Dominici / vocals
Henning Pauly / backing vocals
You’N’Joy Lindenholzhausen / choir

MP3 FLAC