Put your initial thought after your first listen to The Mandrake Project to one sentence please.

I got up early and listened on my EarPods via Apple Music. Afterwards I thought ‘I liked the songs, but the production was weird’. Then I realised I had the stupid Spatial Audio on. I re listened without and thought ‘That’s better!’
 
A very different and impactful album in feel in which all songs are memorable with some very cool ideas, but it's unfinished and disappointing in terms of guitar playing.
 
Mosh said:
This is what I would expect a mish mash of material compiled over a couple decades would sound like"
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For sure, that's the variety, but I expected some ''TCW-heavy/vibe'' material, despite some comments from Roy even back in 2005 that they wanted to go beyond the sound of this album and didn't want to repeat the last 3 albums formula. There are heavy riffs, but the closest is only the lead single.

Edit: about the style of the album, Bruce had said that he now prefers to create metal that can bring emotions, so for this he needs to try (not experiment like in 1994) more sounds that in his last few solo albums. Let's not forget that the lead single was one of the last songs he wrote for the album.
 
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Wow that kinda sucked. What a disappointment. I don't think I'll be giving this another spin anytime soon, might as well listen to an actually good Bruce solo record.
 
An odd thing about it all was for me Afterglow Of Ragnarok as a pre-release. I thought it would have been representative for the album, but what a let down - since there is nothing on the album that comes even close to Afterglow in terms of style and heavyness. It all sounds like at ABSOLUTELY NO point during the process of making this album he had only a glimpse of a direction where he wanted to go with it. It's a soundtrack to a pure identity crisis if you ask me.
 
Dick Brucinson said:
An odd thing about it all was for me Afterglow Of Ragnarok as a pre-release. I thought it would have been representative for the album, but what a let down - since there is nothing on the album that comes even close to Afterglow in terms of style and heavyness. It all sounds like at ABSOLUTELY NO point during the process of making this album he had only a glimpse of a direction where he wanted to go with it. It's a soundtrack to a pure identity crisis if you ask me.
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Do you mean a personal identity crisis (and yes, that influenced what an artist does in his art too) or a crisis regarding which way to go as a musician?
 
Terry1958 said:
Do you mean a personal identity crisis (and yes, that influenced what an artist does in his art too) or a crisis regarding which way to go as a musician?
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Not really sure about that one, it goes hand in hand I'd say. Bruce himself often spoke about his crisis that led to Balls To Picasso, we all know the story, but to me BTP sounds so much more consistent than TMP.
 
Think I got the album actually 1-2 days before the release, for some reason.
It was perhaps little different to what I had waited, but I liked already on the first listen. Some parts felt weird and unfinished, but I thought it was better than most of the bashing comments and reviews I saw.
 
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