The second Conception album took the band out of their own studio and into somebody else’s, with a foreign label paying for it and a producer who would stay with them for the rest of the decade. It ends with an eight-minute piece in three named parts.

The short version

Parallel Minds was released in 1993 by Noise in Germany, catalogue N 0218-2, with a Japanese edition whose booklet, according to the standard reference, prints the lyrics of a song that is not on the disc. The exact date is disputed: the German CD is dated September and the standard reference gives 10 November. It was recorded at Stairway to Heaven Studio in Hannover and Cas Studios in Saarbrücken and mixed at Stairway, produced and engineered by Tommy Newton.

A German label, a German producer, a Japanese pressing

This is the record where Conception stop being a local band. Noise was the German label that had built its reputation on European metal, and signing to it took the group out of Norway and into a professional studio with an outside producer for the first time. Hans Chr. Gjestvang is the sole keyboard player here, and the last Conception album he appears on. The rest of the line-up is unchanged from the debut: Khan on vocals, Østby on guitar and writing the music, Amlien on bass, Heimdal on drums. All lyrics are Khan’s except one. Ingo Chilmud is credited as second engineer.

The sound

Taut, suite-closing progressive metal. Newton’s production tightens everything, and the songs are measurably shorter than on the debut — an average of about four minutes forty against five minutes twelve. What the record gains in discipline it does not lose in ambition: it is sequenced to end with its longest and most sectional piece. English lyrics throughout, and no track is documented as an instrumental.

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The songs

‘Water Confines’ opens the album; sources give its length as anything between four minutes thirteen and four minutes eighteen depending on the edition. ‘My Decision’, seventh, is the one track whose lyrics carry an Ingar Amlien credit alongside Khan’s; every other set of words on the record is Khan’s alone. ‘Soliloquy’ closes the album at somewhere between eight minutes forty and nine minutes seven, again depending on the edition; it is the longest piece on the record and is printed on the sleeve in three named sections.

Reception and legacy

No chart position has been found for this album in any territory, and no sales figure exists. On ProgArchives it holds a community average of 3.63 out of 5 from around eighty ratings, above the debut and below the album that follows. UMUR, awarding four stars there, calls it a high-quality release through and through; Mellotron Storm, also at four, describes it simply as a blast for a progressive metal listener. It was the first Conception record made outside Norway, and it was reissued remastered in September 2022 alongside the other albums of the decade, through Noise and BMG.

The verdict

Parallel Minds is where the band arrive. It is tighter than the debut, less dark than the album after it, and the one most likely to work for a listener coming from melodic metal rather than from progressive rock. The three-part closer is the piece to hear if you only hear one thing, and the Amlien lyric on the seventh track is a small reminder that this was a band rather than a singer and a guitarist. Two years later they would go further in one direction and further still in another; this is the record where the band went forward in every direction at once.

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