martindavey87 After two incredible albums of high-quality progressive metal, Danish band Beyond Twilight shoot themselves in the foot by getting a bit too artsy and fancy with 2006’s ‘For the Love of Art and the Making’. The clue is clearly there in the title. At 38 minutes in length, and featuring 43 tracks, each barely a minute long, the idea behind this release is that the tracks can be played in any order and, depending on how you listen to it, it supposedly can bear different meanings each time.

Yeah, alright.

Can anyone truly say they listened to this more than a couple of times without losing interest? Just as you start to enjoy one segment it skips straight to the next. And everything is so disjointed, no matter what order you play it in. In fact, I tried it a couple of times in random orders, and nothing flows smoothly at all. Additionally, it’s near-impossible to really understand any of what’s going on without actually knowing the lyrics. Bugger that!

It’s a huge shame, as Beyond Twilight’s previous two releases, 2001’s ‘The Devil’s Hall of Fame’ and 2005’s ‘Section X’ are genuinely fantastic albums. These guys are amazing musicians and have an instantly distinctive sound of their own. And while the idea behind ‘For the Love...’ is interesting and massively ambitious, they just weren’t able to make anything substantial come out of it.

I give the album two stars simply because there is some great musicianship and performances, and there are a couple of moments that are pretty neat (if, by pretty neat, you don’t mind songs that last barely a minute). But overall, this album is a huge disappointment, and at the time of writing this review the band haven’t done anything since. Coincidence? I doubt it. Art for art’s sake? Art over substance? Whatever. This album sucks.

adg211288 For the Love of Art and the Making is a very different venture for Beyond Twilight than either of their previous albums, The Devil’s Hall of Fame and Section X. Although musically all the albums are (very) symphonic progressive metal, there is one big difference and it’s an obvious one. Those first two albums were about songs. For the Love of Art and the Making is about being epic or perhaps a better way to put it would be music in its highest art form. The title of the album is very appropriate.

The album is essentially just one song which lasts a little under thirty-eight minutes. But it is broken up into no less than forty-three tracks, none of which last more than three minutes and a lot of them don’t even clock in at a full minute. They’ve done it like this because they like to think of the album as being able to be played on random, but I disagree. Sure you can play it on random if you like but I personally find that if you want this album to really flow properly you have to start it at number one and play right through without stopping for anything, and by doing so you will find no less than perfection.

Musically it is, as you may have guessed by now, Beyond Twilight’s most progressive and experimental work to date. The sections don’t last very long at all so there isn’t going to be much time to get into each section they throw at us before they’re moving it on again. Sometimes you might get sections the same as another thrown in but these are typically few and far between. In short, For the Love... is not an album to be taken lightly, even for fans of the band’s previous works. It’s literally crazy, and yet so brilliant, words cannot really describe it, but I will say this - It requires concentration, and a very dedicated listener. The music is also very classical. If Finn Zierler had lived several hundred years ago today he’d probably be right up there with Mozart and Beethoven as one of the classical greats. There’s plenty of metal, but there’s also pieces which are just focusing on the symphonic and there’s some passages where what I think is Latin thrown into the lyrics for good measure.

If there is a fault on this album, it’s the vocals. While extremely good, Beyond Twilight have had both Jorn Lande and Kelly ‘Sundown’ Carpenter in their ranks previously and have not been able to keep either of them and although Björn Jansson does a great job, he's just not in the same sort of class as Lade or Carpenter. I feel the absence of either of them here but in the album’s defence this is not a record designed to be about vocals. This is about epic composition, the vocals are just an additional instrument, used where appropriate only

Because of its very nature, For the Love... is not likely to be an album for everyone. Even I, very much a prog head, had trouble getting into it when I first heard it. But for those who do get it they should find something truly special and unique. A true masterwork of progressive metal music, and for entirely different reasons than Section X, the band's previous album which I would rate with the same score. I used to prefer Section X over For the Love... but now that situation is reversed, as I have found this album to be one of those that seems to get better with each listen. Highly recommended.

(Review originally written for Heavy Metal Haven)