The debut album “Life Cycle” (1988) by the Munich band SIEGES EVEN was already a culture shock. Journalists tried helplessly to describe progressive thrash with terms like “jazz metal,” while metal fans reacted either with enthusiasm or with a big question mark over their heads. Nevertheless, everyone understood that this was one of the best musical bands from Germany. Two years later they went one step further with the successor “Steps”… The thrash content was reduced to almost zero, but they showed mercilessly that they had gained new skills in the last few months. The band, still young at the time, played on a level that was unprecedented in European heavy metal. Only in America did Watchtower or Dream Theater deliver similarly complicatedly arranged material. In good Rush tradition, “S.