lukretion The decadent title chosen for The 69 Eyes’ sixth album – Paris Kills – captures well the essence of the music it contains: glossy and romantic goth ‘n’ roll that even vampires would fall in love with. In many ways, Paris Kills is the natural evolution of the two albums that preceded it, as the Finns continue their ascension to the summit of the then-popular Love Metal genre, shedding away the edgier, noisier and heavier aspects of their sound in favour of the same mellow and poised gothic allure their countrymen HIM and Sentenced were showcasing in those years.

The new songs have a direct and simple structure, usually consisting of subdued verses tightly woven around catchy hooks on the choruses. The guitars chug away and the bass pulsates in the background, giving the music a dense and groovy backbone, with plenty of space for the keyboards and vocals. Played by producer Johnny Lee Michaels, the keyboards are fairly prominent here, and rely on both subtle electronic loops and warmer organ-drenched sounds. Jyrki’s vocals are the other dominant aspect of the music. His croon is low and ominous, but also alluring and seductive – a perfect black gothic vampire at the mic. The main vocal lines are beautifully complemented by vivid rock-n-roll backing vocals that inject good energy into the music.

The template works a charm and it’s hard to find a fault with textbook-perfect goth anthems such as “Crashing High”, “Dance d’Amour” or “Betty Blue” (all launched as singles) or many of the other songs included here. I also enjoy how the album seems to enter a more experimental phase towards its mid-section, as tracks such as “Grey”, “Radical”, and “Stigmata” usher in electro-industrial vibes and an overall more sinister mood. It’s a welcome digression from the love-drenched goth decadence of the rest of the record, which would have otherwise been too homogeneous to retain interest from start to finish.

Paris Kills will eventually go platinum and is still considered The 69 Eyes’ crowning achievement by some. Personally, I prefer the two albums that preceded it, Wasting the Dawn and Blessed Be: they may be rawer but they are also more inspired and genuine compared to the material included here. In fact, the biggest problem I have with Paris Kills is that is sounds a tad too tame and predictable, as if, by perfecting their formula to its ultimate level, the Finns might have somewhat lost that sacred flame of artistry that burns instead so vividly in their less-perfect, but more earnest previous records.

lukretion My reaction to Malmsteen’s post-1990s albums is almost as predictable as the formula he used to write them. Invariably, I end up concluding that the Swedish guitar wizard has done better elsewhere. Attack!! is no exception, although there are more surprises here than what I was expecting going in. This turns out to be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, Malmsteen seems to have tried to shake things up a bit across the 15 tracks that form this record, which is never a bad thing. On the other hand, the new directions he experimented with in some of the songs seem somewhat misguided and give the album a fragmented, disjointed feel overall.

In the album’s first-half, Yngwie seems busy attempting to revive the sound and spirit of his glorious past. Fast neoclassical guitar scales abound in the construction of riffs, leads and solos, absolutely dominating the soundscape and instantly bringing to mind the true essence of the genre. Differently from the neoclassical power metal strain that became popular in the 1990s, the spirit of songs like “Valley of Kings”, “Ship of Fools”, or the title-track, is truly rooted in the classic origins of the genre, displaying a hard rock swagger that instantly connects to the music of the 1970s (Deep Purple, Rainbow). Enlisting Doogie White on vocals was a clever move to make that connection even more credible, as the singer does a good job at infusing the polished baroque melodies with some healthy rock ‘n’ roll grit. With the guitar and voice firmly put at the heart of each song, the other musicians are vastly relegated to an inconspicuous sparring partner role, which is mad considering the talents Yngwie managed to enlist here (did he really need Derek Sherinian to play simple chords in a handful of tracks?). But this won’t surprise anyone who is familiar with Malmsteen or who has simply glanced at the endless list of musicians that have transited in his band over the years.

If the album’s first-half flows away pleasantly albeit with a general sense of deja-vu, the second-half is where things start going awry. Here Yngwie attempted to shake things up with a handful of tracks that depart from the usual neoclassical formula, but unfortunately took things in directions that are not particularly convincing. If the detour towards classical instrumental music (“Baroque & Roll”, “Air”) fits well with the album’s overall aesthetics, I cannot say the same about the AOR inflections of “Stronghold” and “Touch the Sky”, or about the straightforward but insipid rock ‘n’ roll vibes of “Mad Dog”. The major offender, however, is “Freedom Isn't Free” a fuzzy blues affair that may nod to Jimi Hendrix, but in a way that would have made the poor man roll over in his grave. The fact that Yngwie decided to sing this song himself with a performance which isn’t exactly for the history books, only adds to the woes of what must be the album’s absolutely lowest point.

The combination of inconsistent direction and lack of quality makes the album’s latter part a chore to sit through and, by the time I get to “Freedom Isn't Free”, I usually press the STOP button because I can’t seem to make myself care about the LP anymore (which is a pity since “Majestic Blue” and “Valhalla” are not bad songs, actually). The shaky sound production isn’t exactly encouraging repeat listens, either. Unsurprisingly, the guitars dominate the soundscape, but they are mixed oddly with the rhythm guitar hard-panned to the right and the bass hard-panned to the left in the stereo mix, giving an odd, disjointed feel to the overall sound. The sudden spikes in volume that occur whenever the lead guitar kicks in contribute to the same unpleasant effect. The drums are also mixed in a strange way, very loud and in your face but with a flat, lifeless sound that at times is actually annoying (the snare in “Attack!!”).

Overall, Attack!! leaves me with the general impression of a less accomplished and less inspired version of the sound Yngwie pioneered in the 1980s, with the further aggravating factor of a highly inconsistent and misguided second-half. For some, Attack!! may still be better than the two albums that immediately preceded it, but we are a long long way from anything that might resemble a reasonable return to form.

lukretion Sinergy’s third full-length album, Suicide by My Side, is one of those records that it will take you exactly 15 seconds to know whether you like or not. That’s because what you hear in the first 15 seconds of its opening track “I Spit on Your Grave” gives you a very precise idea of what the remaining 38 minutes of the album have to offer: a relentless sonic assault that blends the melodic exuberance of NWOBHM twin-guitar approach with the uncompromising aggression of 1980s thrash, sprinkling touches of neoclassical metal guitar wizardy along the way. Another way to describe the Finnish band’s approach is a growl-less, more polished version of Children of Bodom that takes more time to explore the 1980s roots of their sound than Alexi Laiho’s band ever did.

It may be somewhat mischievous to describe Sinergy’s music by referencing well-known bands and well-consolidated genres from the past, but on the other hand the description seems to capture well the spirit which seems to have fuelled the band’s short-lived musical career. I will not go as far as calling Sinergy a CoB side-project despite the presence of Roope Latvala and Alexi Laiho in both bands’ line-ups, but it seems clear to me that Sinergy and this album should be taken as a “lets-have-some-fun” affair aimed at making no-frills, no-nonsense, straight-in-your-face heavy metal music, without much concern for “breaking new ground” or “experimenting with new sounds”. The fact the rest of the line-up was comprised of other prominent members of the Finnish musical scene at the time (Tonmi Lillman from To/Die/For on drums; Marco Hietala on bass) reinforces the impression of a gathering of likeminded artists who simply wanted to let out some steam by playing uncompromising, wild heavy metal.

Of the five musicians involved, only singer Kimberly Goss had a relatively inconspicuous curriculum at the time, which effectively made Sinergy her main band. This observation suggests another interpretation for Sinergy’s musical proposal, as a vehicle for Kimberly’s creativity. This alternative version is also plausible, both because of her role as main songwriter in a number of songs included on this album, and because Kimberly’s voice is probably the aspect of Suicide by My Side that stands out the most, next to the amazing twin guitarwork by Latvala and Laiho. Departing from the typical approach of other female lead singers in metal bands at the time, Kimberly unleashes a monstrous performance, packed with tons of distortion and grit, and almost terrifying in terms of sheer power and aggression. There’s little doubt in my mind that, despite the cult status that many of her bandmates had or will acquire, she is the true star of the show here and the ultimate reason Sinergy is a name that has left a mark in the annals, unlike other bands that have attempted a similar musical path.

Suicide by My Side offers a fun, energetic 38-minute listening experience, but it ultimately dies by its own hand as the same qualities that make it stand out are also those that eventually hold it back. First, Kimberly’s vocals. All the ripping and roaring can definitely be too much after a while and, a few songs into the album, one does feel the need of a change in delivery. You’d think the balladish number “Written in Stone” may give you just that, but not really, as Kimberly pretty much keeps ripping and roaring there as elsewhere on the record, just at a slower tempo. It is not just Kimberly’s approach that feels slightly unidimensional. More generally, it’s hard to shake off the feeling that this album would benefit from a few more changes in pace, mood and delivery. Out of the 10 songs here, 7 are pretty much cut out of the same cloth: fast-and-furious, high-octane 1980s heavy metal. Nothing wrong with that, but it gets boring after a while, especially considering the slightly derivative nature of the material. “Written in Stone” slows things down a bit as mentioned earlier, but without really providing any noticeable change in style, while “Remembrance” is a short instrumental outro that feels more like an afterthought than an integral part of the record. It is only “Shadow Island” that feels truly different from the rest of the material. This song unfurls through different sections, multiple tempo changes, and a whirlwind of moods that it’s rare to find elsewhere on the record. It also stands out for the use of multiple vocal styles: Kimberly’s cleans, Alexi’s black/death growls and a clean, semi-operatic choir sung by Kimberly and Marco Hietala. This song is far more interesting than any of the other tracks on the album and it shows glimpses of the greatness this band could have achieved if they had perhaps taken the whole Sinergy project more seriously and more ambitiously.

Despite its limitations, Suicide by My Hand is a fun record to spin every once in a while. It has passion and energy like you won’t find in many other records. It has plenty of excellent, at times even godly, guitar work. And it is a powerful reminder that female vocals in metal do not have a place only in traditional beauty-and-the-beast bands. As long as you don’t expect too much from it, it’s hard to see how you won’t have a good time with this record.

lukretion Hot on the heels of the success of Avantasia’s 2001 debut record, Tobias Sammet released the second instalment of his metal opera already one year later, relying on same cast of musicians and vocalists who had lent him their talents for Part 1. The overall approach has not changed much either relative to the first part: The Metal Opera Part 2 has the same ambition to unite the spirit of rock operas and Broadway musicals with that of heavy metal.

Sammet seems to have a clear idea of how to achieve this. His basic formula contains three key ingredients: 1) liberal inspiration from the heavy metal subgenres he admires the most (NWOBHM, classic heavy metal, European power metal), 2) a touch of theatrical flair by virtue of tasteful piano and keyboards arrangements, and 3) most importantly, a large cast of singers to interpret the songs, with each singer assigned to a different character as in a musical. The approach feels slightly primitive and visceral, and it lacks the sophistication and breadth of an Arjen Lucassen’s rock/metal opera, but it does work and it has certainly delivered a bunch of great songs across this and the previous record.

Sammet’s metal opera sounds most convincing when one can most clearly perceive a difference in songwriting between the songs written for Avantasia and those Sammet writes for his regular band, German speed/power metal veterans Edguy. On Part 1, this happened only sporadically, whereas here Sammet seems to have made a more conscious effort to avoid relying too much on standard speed/power metal aesthetics. This is what makes The Metal Opera Part 2 a more successful and satisfying album compared to its predecessor, in my opinion. The songwriting is more varied, spanning a wider array of styles in metal and rock, with nods to the great bands of the past (Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Rainbow, Dio) as well as the contemporaneous German speed/power metal scene. This variety injects a sense of development and purpose to the album, which flows like a story should.

Two mellow, vaguely AOR songs like “The Looking Glass” and “In Quest For”, majestically interpreted by Bob Catley, may feel out of place on a metal album, but they are perfect in the context of a metal/rock opera, as they provide a suitable change of pace, mood and delivery compared to the faster and heavier material found in the rest of the album, thus adding another dimension to the music. The contrast with the following track “The Final Sacrifice”, which is one of the heaviest pieces here, fuelled by David DeFeis’s mighty roar, is wonderful and it is exactly what one needs to develop an overarching, dynamic narrative that can transcend individual songs and be more than the sum of its parts. The album’s opener “The Seven Angels” is another example of the considerable progress Sammet made in his songwriting in the span of a few months. Even though one could describe it as essentially two songs stitched together by a semi-ambient mid-section, the flow feels natural and works well, with good dynamics that allow the listener to engage with the music for the whole 14 minutes of the song’s duration.

Unfortunately, after an explosive and near-perfect first-half, the album inexplicably peters out in the second half, with a sequence of songs that are much more homogeneous in style and feel less inspired overall. Here the speed/power metal aesthetics seem to prevail, which may be a hint of auto-pilot songwriting on the part of Sammet. The fact these songs rely on a cast of singers who sound quite similar to one another (Rob Rock, Kai Hansen, Sammet himself) is another reason why I feel slightly underwhelmed every time I pass track #5 and go through the album’s final five songs. It is only with the closing song “Into the Unknown” that things get interesting again, mostly thanks to the beautiful vocal contribution by Sharon den Adel, who as in Part 1 feels again criminally underutilized by Sammet.

Overall, if Sammet’s ultimate goal was to forge a new genre of music (“the metal opera”), it’s fair to say that Avantasia only partially succeeded in doing so in their first two records. The speed/power metal dimension ultimately dominates proceedings here as in 2001’s Part 1 and the “opera” elements mostly come in the form of multiple singers interpreting the songs. However, The Metal Opera Part 2 comes a step closer to hitting the mark compared to Part 1, by virtue of a first-half which gives us glimpses of how one can accomplish a natural and successful hybridization between the worlds of metal and Broadway. I suspect this is ultimately why this album receives consistently less praise than its precursor in metal circles, as it is a step removed from metal orthodoxy and a step closer to realizing Sammet’s true vision for Avantasia.

lukretion Vision of Atlantis’ debut album Eternal Endless Infinity firmly belongs to the symphonic power metal subgenre that Nightwish popularized in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Closer to home, fellow Austrian band Edenbridge are another reference for the six-piece formation from Bruck an der Mur. As per the genre’s aesthetics, the line-up is comprised of two vocalists, one male (Christian Stani) and one female (Nicole Bogner), and a keyboard player (Chris Kamper), in addition to the standard metal/rock instrumentation (guitars: Werner Fiedler, bass: Mike Koren, drums: Thomas Caser).

If you are familiar with the genre, you won’t find many surprises in Eternal Endless Infinity. The formula the band follows throughout the LP’s ten tracks is tried and true. A tight double-bass drumming dictates a fast tempo in most songs, which the guitars and bass follow diligently by providing a satisfying low-end chugginess to the music. Chris Kamper’s symphonic flourish are very prominent and very very good, spanning a wide range of timbres and styles, from classical orchestration to electronic effects (“Eclipse”). Folk influences are occasionally blended into the music, too. Instrumentally, the album’s ten songs offer top-notch material, showcasing the four musicians’ technical proficiency (listen to Thomas Caser’s high-speed drum fills), but also their taste and skills in writing and arranging the songs.

However, two things hold this album back. First and foremost, the production is terrible. To put it bluntly, the sound quality is closer to that of a demo than a professional studio album. The guitars sound raw and at the same time lack presence. The bass is inaudible. The drums sound poor as well, flat and lifeless. Meanwhile, the vocals seem to have been recorded with the singers placed two meters away from the mic: their voices often struggle to emerge from the background and at times completely disappear behind the other instruments (are those muffled noises in “Lords of the Sea” and “The Quest” supposed to be growls?). Talking about vocals, this is the other main drawback of the record. Granted, they have not been recorded very well, but it is also clear that the two singers, Christian Stani and Nicole Bogner, are not yet in full control of their voices. Nicole in particular seem to struggle with her power, and her mezzosoprano vocals at times sound incredibly feeble and tentative. On the other hand, she seems to have a good timbre and a decent range. Christian Stani’s delivery is more satisfying, although he seems to have an inferior range and technique compared to Nicole. Overall, both their performances do not sound fully convincing, albeit for different reasons, which is of course a massive problem given that the band’s chosen genre requires the focus to be placed on the vocals.

Having said that, I must also concede that Eternal Endless Infinity does possess a special charm. Part of it comes from the spontaneity and enthusiasm the band clearly put in the songwriting, which is simple and by no means perfect, but also bursts with an energy and genuine passion that one may not always find in more accomplished releases. In many ways, Vision of Atlantis’ spontaneous approach reminds of Nightwish’s early records, which were similarly imperfect and eager to impress. Another contribution to the album’s special charm comes from Christian Stani’s vocal delivery. I criticized his technique earlier, but it is also true that his shouted, almost goth/punk approach stands out in a positive way in the context of this record, especially because it creates a beautiful contrast with the power metal stylings of the compositions.

Ultimately, these factors are Eternal Endless Infinity’s redeeming grace and save it from total disaster. It is not enough, however, to elevate the album beyond a “collectors only” status, in my opinion. Better examples in this subgenre abound, both from other bands and from Vision of Atlantis themselves. Eternal Endless Infinity is thus interesting to explore only if you are a fan of the band and want to dig deeper into their origins.

lukretion German six-piece At Vance were unbelievably prolific at the start of their career. Only Human is their fourth full-length in only 4 years. One could fear this high-volume may come at the detriment of the quality of the songwriting, but this is generally not the case here. Although Only Human is not immune to filler tracks, most songs included on the LP are very solid, some even brilliant, examples of well-composed, proficiently played neoclassical metal. The stars of the project are undeniably guitar player (and main songwriter) Olaf Lenk and singer Oliver Hartmann. Lenk is a terrific guitarist, capable of writing muscular yet sublimely melodic riffs as well as solos that are not mere shredding but also have purpose and sense of direction. Hartmann is an incredibly underrated singer, who gained recognition at the beginning of his career (he featured in a number of “rock/metal opera” productions, most notably in Avantasia’s first two LPs) but somewhat disappeared from the scenes later on. His voice is a cross between RJ Dio and David Coverdale, gritty yet exquisitely melodic and with an innate sense of melancholy that carries over even in his most aggressive delivery. The rest of the lineup is also solid, although they are not given much room to shine in the tight, no-nonsense compositions that form the album.

Propelled by this talented lineup, Only Human delivers a handful of outstanding songs. The record’s first-half is particularly compelling. Songs like the title-track, “Take My Pain”, “Fly to the Rainbow” and the ballad “Hold Your Fire” come filled with memorable hooks and a healthy dose of metallic grittiness, and easily stand neck to neck with the best output from the genre’s forbearers and guiding lights (Rainbow, Yngwie Malmsteen’s Rising Force). In fact, looking at the poor quality of Yngwie’s output in the new millennium, I’d bet this is the album he would have wanted to write in 2002 for his Rising Force instead of Attack!!. It’s not all 1980s nostalgia, though, as At Vance also venture into symphonic territories that reminded me of Royal Hunt, especially in “Take My Pain” and “Time”, two songs whose arrangements have the expansive, polyphonic quality the Danish band have become famous for. At Vance’s symphonic ambitions are further showcased in the two instrumentals “Four Seasons/Spring” and “Solfeggietto”, which are metal renditions of classical music pieces by Vivaldi and Bach, respectively.

While Only Human starts with a bang, I cannot say I was equally impressed by the LP’s second-half. Here At Vance seem to lose somewhat steam and sense of direction. “Sing This Song” and “Witches’ Dance” usher in odd folkish influences that do not blend well with the rest of the material, while “Take Me Away” is perhaps the most obvious filler track of the whole album. Culling some of these weaker tracks would have done good to the overall listening experience. I would have also enjoyed the album more if At Vance had generally embraced a more succinct songwriting approach, since many of the songs feel perhaps a tad too lengthy for what they actually have to say. Ultimately, the slightly inconsistent quality of the album’s tracklist as well as the objectively derivative nature of the material included here prevents me to regard this record as a masterpiece, although it is nevertheless a good album that I enjoy spinning every now and again.

lukretion Nocturnal Rites’ fifth LP Shadowland is a clever album. It embraces many different directions and influences to conjure up a unique sound that makes the Swedish band instantly recognizable in a field that, by the late 90s / early 00s, was definitely becoming overcrowded. On the one hand, the Swedes seem to find inspiration in the German speed/power metal tradition of bands like Helloween and Gamma Ray. Tracks like the title-track, “Revelation” and “Vengeance” are built around fast tempos punctuated by relentless double-bass drumming and rapid-fire riffs, which create a massive tension in the song’s verses to then release it in the hyper-melodic, brighter choruses. Elsewhere, however, the influence of neoclassical metal and hard-rock is equally prominent. “Invincible”, “Underworld”, and “Faceless God” unfurl through moody mid-tempos, menacing riffs and baroque melodies that immediately bring to mind the work of Rainbow, Dio or Yngwie Malmsteen. In other tracks (“The Watcher”) there are hints of progressive metal, where the band seek more complex arrangements and flamboyant but really well-constructed solos in a way that reminded me of Evergrey or perhaps a less technical version of Symphony X.

You will recognize that the names dropped in the previous paragraph do not inhabit completely separated and incommunicado universes. Yet, their aesthetics are sufficiently distinct and distinctive to make it a challenge to blend them together without losing consistency and identity. Nocturnal Rites achieve this with ease. The shifts in tempos and melodic tones that occur across the album’s 10 songs feel natural and credible, and so does the contrast and alternation between dark and brighter moods that pervade the album. Vocalist Jonny Lindqvist plays a big role in this. His distinctive voice, powerful and gritty, yet greatly melodic and gifted with considerable range, ties the different styles and moods of the album together. He is equally at ease with dark, sinister melodic progressions as with more upbeat ones, providing the continuity needed to bridge them together. It is a bonus that the yin–yang approach in the songwriting and vocal delivery also fits nicely with the record’s theme of contrast between good and evil / day and night, as also illustrated on the album’s cover.

For all there is to like, I can't quite label this album as a masterpiece for three key reasons. First and foremost, the consistency in songwriting quality leaves something to be desired. While tracks like "Eyes of the Dead," "Invincible," "Underworld," "Faceless God," and "The Watcher" shine brilliantly, there's also a fair share of forgettable, filler-like material, especially in the album's first half. Second, despite the variation in styles and moods I mentioned earlier, the album fails to create a sense of development and progression throughout its tracklist. It appears that the guiding principle behind the tracklist was to alternate between fast and mid-tempo songs in sequence, which unfortunately leads to a sense of repetition over time. Lastly, the production quality falls somewhat short, particularly when compared to other records released around the same time in similar genres. The guitars are somewhat buried in the mix, overshadowed by the vocals and drums, resulting in a muddied and indistinct sound. The keyboards suffer a similar fate, which is regrettable since both these instruments typically provide the harmonic texture of the music. Unfortunately, the production relegates them to the background, creating a somewhat uninspiring, muffled wall-of-sound.

In summary, Shadowland is the classic album that I can play over and over in the course of a day, finding myself nodding pleasantly along with its main themes and melodies. However, each time I listen, I fall short of being fully immersed and truly captivated by it. There's nothing inherently bad here, although I might consider changing the production and mix if I had the opportunity. On the flip side, there's also nothing that reaches a truly transcendental level. It's simply good, solid dark melodic power metal, which sometimes is exactly what one needs to enjoy.

lukretion HammerFall’s fourth LP, Crimson Thunder, does not offer major stylistic innovations compared to the formula the Swedes had used since their very first album, Glory to the Brave. As heralds of the “power metal renaissance”, HammerFall continue to cunningly assemble together assorted influences from the 80s heavy/power metal scene, including NWOBHM, neoclassical metal (Rainbow, Dio, Malmsteen), and traditional epic metal (Manowar). While the influences are obvious, the blend the Swedes have to offer is admittedly hard to resist when the band play on all cylinders. Alas, this is probably where Crimson Thunder is lacking and the reason why it has gained such a bad reputation among fans and critics. It is actually not a bad album per se, but it comes across as uninspired and dull – almost as if the five-piece did not put their whole heart into writing and recording it. For this reason, it simply does not stand up to the comparison with the three albums that preceded it.

It is quite difficult to find obvious factual faults with the songwriting and arrangements of the album’s 11 songs (well, except the simplistic lyrics and the awfully cheesy ballad “Dreams Come True” – but those come as part of the package, I suppose). Everything sounds competent and ticks all the right boxes when it comes to traditional heavy/power metal. The no-frills drumming is fast and precise, providing a steady if slightly unimaginative rhythmic foundation to the songs. The guitars switch with ease between riffs, melodic leads and power chords, transmitting tension and then release to the music, as necessary. Dual leads and interplays are used cleverly hinting at NWOBHM influences. Occasionally, the bass takes on a lead role while the guitarists take a backseat, like on the single “Hears on Fire”, providing astute shifts in dynamics. HammerFall also indulge in gentle nudges to neoclassical metal, especially in the guitar solos, just to remind us that they are after all from the land of Mr Malmsteen. Meanwhile, Joacim Cans churns out his usual share of simple and easy-to-memorize melodies, helped by male gang backing-vocals in the choruses, a trick taken directly from the playbook of Manowar. The production is excellent, bursting with power and clarity, reminding everyone why Charlie Bauerfeind (Rage, Blind Guardian, and many others) has gained such a strong reputation as a metal producer.

These are all textbook traditional heavy/power metal aesthetics, which should awake and excite the Metal Defender in our soul. Alas, it instead actually risks putting it to sleep. The first half of the album is particularly dull, filled with a bunch of similarly bland songs that can only be distinguished by the speed of their underlying click-track. While listening to them, I reminded of the tired feeling I sometimes get at metal concerts, late in the evenings of a weekday, after an intense day at work. I knew exactly at which part of a song I am supposed to get excited and animated by, but I just can’t gather the energy to do so. These songs have the same effect on me: I know precisely what each part is supposed to achieve– the verses building tension, the pre-choruses slowly increasing in loudness and then the epic release in the mighty refrains -, but they just fail to get to me. Ultimately, I believe it comes down to run-of-the-mill songwriting, which recycles ideas that we have all heard somewhere else, done better (possibly by HammerFall themselves).

Once we are past the terrible keyboard-driven interlude “Lore of the Arcane”, the album’s second half gets better. Here HammerFall seem to have put a little bit more imagination into the songwriting. “Trailblazers” feels fresh and dynamic, thanks to its frequent tempo changes and a chorus that for once does not feel totally cliché. Chastain’s cover “Angel of Mercy” offers a nice, doomy diversion, fuelled by a moody chorus with a Dio-esque feel to it. I also like the mellow instrumental “In Memoriam”, where Stefan Elmgren showcases good taste in the choice of leads and texture. “Hero’s Return” gets a thumbs-up for giving me strong NWOBHM vibes (Iron Maiden, especially in the verse) and it again has a decent chorus and a nice clavinet coda to round things off. The version I own also includes a bonus track, a speedy rendition of Malmsteen’s iconic song “Rising Force” from his 1988’s Odyssey album, which actually feels somewhat amateurish as it fails to capture the classy, pompous feel of the original.

Ultimately, the bunch of decent songs surfacing in the latter part of the record save it from a complete flop. It is still fair to say Crimson Thunder does not quite match up with the expectations the band’s first three LPs had created. But at the same time, it is not a terrible CD to spin once in a while, preferably while doing something else while listening to it (it’s quite a good album to drive to!), in order to reduce the sense of dullness that would otherwise become pervasive in an active listening session.

lukretion Stygma IV’s fourth full-length The Human Twilight Zone can be described as an attempt to bridge together the sound of the band’s first LP, the proggy and experimental Solum Mente Infirmis..., with their leaner, more direct other two records, where the Austrian combo veered towards a dark prog/power metal sound with thrashy inflections. The problem, however, is that Stygma IV tried to achieve this difficult balance by extremizing both aspects of their previous sound. The Human Twilight Zone is at the same time rougher and more complex than each of the band’s previous albums.

This isn’t a very promising or successful approach, in my view. The Human Twilight Zone is heavy as a tons of bricks, as Stygma IV bludgeons the unsuspecting listener with copious doses of granitic guitar riffs, pounding drum beats, fast tempos, and aggressive shouted vocals, conjuring up a sound that isn’t miles away from early Savatage or Nevermore. There are very few concessions to melody across the album’s 12 tracks and even after repeated listens I wouldn’t be able to reproduce any of the vocal lines or melodies the band put on this LP.

Normally, this type of heavy, uncompromising approach favours simple, streamlined song structures and arrangements, to maximize impact, but also to mercifully avoid overloading the listener. Not here, alas. The songwriting is utterly complex, with multi-part structures, multiple changes of tempo, and frequent detours from the main themes, sometimes stretching the songs to improbable lengths (the 16+ minutes of “Sleep”). Generally, as a prog rock and metal lover, I can take complexity. Hell, often I even demand complexity, and in my reviews you will regularly find me moaning about albums where things get too pedestrian. But writing a good, complex piece of progressive music takes much more than just stacking together a zillion different riffs and motifs. The various ideas need to flow into one another, while the song should not lose an overall sense of purpose and direction. All things that I fail to perceive here, where the band have instead seemingly followed an “everything but the kitchen sink” approach rather than a reasoned and skilled compositional style. I cannot say I am surprised, though, because this was also my complaint with Stygma IV’s first LP Solum Mente Infirmis..., for which I had greatly welcomed the more direct and streamlined direction the band had taken with their subsequent albums.

As in the case of Solum Mente Infirmis..., I am left with the impression that this four-piece is comprised of really skilled musicians (bassist Alexander Hilzensauer is a truly gifted musician) who have some interesting and exciting ideas, which however they fail to translate into enjoyable and harmonious compositions. The final deathblow to this album is delivered by the subpar production, which is actually closer to a rough demo than a professional studio album. The drum sound is particularly bad and I really dislike the disjointed way guitars and drums are mixed together, giving an uneven sound to the whole record.

After all this criticism, you may wonder why my rating is still so relatively high. It’s because the musicianship is generally good and I can still find nice sections here and there in some of the songs (be it a riff, a solo, or simply a particularly headbangable passage). But all in all this is one of those albums that I had to force myself to listen to repeatedly for reviewing purposes, and I am pretty sure I won’t be returning to it any time soon after I wrap up this piece.

lukretion Already with 2001’s record Welcome to the Other Side, Peavy Wagner had shown all the potential of the new Rage’s line-up, where guitar prodigy Victor Smolski and veteran drummer Mike Terrana had replaced the Efthimiadis brothers. That album, however, was marred by the prolixity (17 tracks!) and uneven quality of the material. With their second attempt, Unity, the trio succeeded with flying colours, single-handedly correcting all the main defects of the previous record.

The songwriting is lean and concise as rarely before on a Rage’s LP. No fillers or fat to trim on the 11 tracks of this record: everything is condensed to its essential elements, making for an explosive and thoroughly enjoyable listen through and through. This freshness also owes a debt to the clever diversification of ideas explored on the album. The trio of opening tracks (“All I Want”, “Insanity”, “Down”) and “Seven Deadly Sins”, with their fast-paced tempos, thrash-inspired riffing, and aggressive vocal delivery and lyrics, are a continuation of the return to the band’s heavier roots initiated with Welcome to the Other Side. However, Unity contains much more than a healthy share of kicks in the face to the unsuspecting metal fan. Even in the heavier and darker tracks, the Germans never lose sight of melody, injecting bright, memorable hooks in the choruses to provide contrast and balance to the fury and aggression. Elsewhere “Set This World on Fire” and “You Want It, You’ll Get It” marry speed, melody and baroque scales in the best tradition of neoclassical power metal, whereas Rage give full vent to their progressive ambitions in the album’s awesome mid-section (“Dies Irae”, “World of Pain”, “Living My Dream”) as well as in the long instrumental title-track that closes the album. “Dies Irae” is particularly stunning, fuelled by a terrific guitar riff as well as a majestic, theatrical vocal performance by Peavy Wagner, further complemented by an opera choir.

The three musicians’ performances are spectacular, with Smolksi’s quick-fire and intelligent guitar playing being particularly praiseworthy. Following his twisty riffs and blistering solos across the album is pure joy and the fact that the guitarwork is so perfectly integrated with the rest of the instruments (particularly Terrana’s drums), is testament to the skills of sound engineer Charlie Bauerfeind, who succeeds in balancing warmth, power and pristine sound clarity in a production that has nothing to envy to modern, contemporary ones. I also appreciated the sparse but effective use of synths and keyboards, especially in the proggy closing track “Unity”.

Although my love for Rage blossomed during their “symphonic years” (Lingua Mortis to Ghosts) and I will always be partial to that phase of their discography, it’s foolish not to see Unity as a renaissance for the German combo, after a couple of records (Welcome to the Other Side but also Ghosts) where the band had started to show signs of weathering. By combining together different traditions of metal (thrashy 80s metal, German power/speed metal, prog metal) in a natural and seamless way, the album provides a bird’s eye view on the band’s catalogue past and present, while at the same time projecting it into the future. Most importantly, it makes for a great energetic album that is lots of fun to listen to from start to finish.

lukretion Hate them or love them, Manowar are one of the most well-known (and talked about) metal bands on the planet. Warriors of the World is the Americans’ 9th full-length album, released in 2002 after a gap of 6 years from their previous LP, Lounder Than Hell. And if that record had already started to show a worrying involution in the band’s sound, Warriors of the World continues the inexorable decline, marking a new low in Manowar’s discography.

The band’s sound has not changed much over the years – forging that epic, loud brand of traditional heavy metal that has served as template for countless bands since the 1980s. While not very different from the rest of their discography, the tracks on Warriors of the World resemble more a faded photograph of Manowar’s sonic prototype than a 2.0 version propelled in the new millennium. The tracks have all the right ingredients – loud, steady drum beats, powerful bass and guitar riffs, epic vocal melodies -, but it is hard to shake the impression that we haven’t heard all this before already, but better. A ballad like “Swords in the Wind” pales in comparison to masterpieces such as “Master of the Wind” or “Heart of Steel”, lacking in pathos and delivery. The more uptempo and aggressive songs (“Hand of Doom”, “House of Death “, “Fight Until We Die”) fare somewhat better, but they too show the signs of time: Eric Adams’ roar, while still respectable, is just a tiny bit less commanding than on previous records; the guitar and bass riffs feel slightly recycled; and the arrangements are somewhat less vivid. In sum, it’s hard to see why one would prefer to listen to this over any of the band’s previous 8 records, if free to choose.

Of course, the fact Manowar might have written better songs and albums before, is no reason to consider Warriors of the World a bad record per se. However, it is hard to ignore some glaring issues it presents. First and foremost, the album contains a lot of fluff. And when I say “a lot”, I mean more than 50% of the material included here. This is mostly concentrated in the album’s first half, where we have two fairly insipid balladish songs (“The Fight for Freedom” and “Swords in the Wind”), two frankly improbable covers (a snippet of Puccini’s aria “Nessun Dorma” and Elvis Presley’s “An American Trilogy”) and two pointless, keyboard-driven instrumentals (“Valhalla” and “The March”). That’s a total of six slow, fairly pompous, slightly lethargic songs in a row! It would be enough to sink even the strongest of albums and, alas, the remaining five tracks of Warriors of the World fare just above average. The concluding lot of songs, from the title-track to “Fight Until We Die”, is by far the best the LP has to offer, although it’s hard to ignore the fact that “Hand of Doom”, “House of Death” and “Fight Until We Die” are essentially cut from the same cloth and have their own issues too (for instance, the ending chorus of “Hand of Doom” drags on way too long and “Fight Until We Die” really feels like a mere appendix to “House of Death”).

Overall, I cannot say I enjoy listening to Warriors of the World much. The first half is highly inconsistent and boring. The second half is better, but seems to have been written on autopilot, recycling familiar riffs and melodies (and lyrics, of course). Maybe Manowar should have tried to condense this material into an EP (with the covers + instrumental a b-sides, possibly). Either way, I cannot see myself playing this one very often, unless someone steals all previous Manowar’s albums from my collection.

lukretion Swedish prog rock/metal heavyweights Soen are back with their sixth studio album, Memorial – and it’s yet another masterpiece in a catalogue that is growing to be one of the most impressive and consistent in the whole genre. With Memorial, the Swedes continue the subtle evolution of their sound towards heavier modern metal territory they started with their previous LP Imperial, merging a harder American alt-metal edge with the unmistakable Scandinavian melancholy and majesticness that has always characterized the band’s output.

The contrast between these two aspects of Soen’s sound has never been starker, which is part of what makes Memorial such a splendidly dynamic and wholly entertaining record. There are very few traces left of the mid-paced songwriting and mild-mannered delivery that have characterized much of the band’s pervious records. These have been instead replaced by a fury and raw energy that pervades nearly all aspects of the new songs. Martin López dispenses with much of his signature syncopations and polyrhythms to instead favour a steadier and more direct drumming style, providing a mighty solid backbone to the arrangements. Meanwhile, Joel Ekelöf injects tons of rasp and distortion in his normally silky and restrained vocal delivery. The melodies he sings on the new songs are also more direct and rudimental than what he has used us to, which suits perfectly his harsher signing style. Perhaps even most notably, many of the songs are fast-paced and infused with a cornucopia of very headbangable riffs that give the guitars a dominant role in the arrangements (“Sincere”, “Unbreakable”, “Fortress”, “Incendiary”, “Icon”). Even Cody Ford’s solos often stray away from his typical Gilmouresque approach and towards more uptempo and dissonant playing.

Against this backdrop, the sparse moments of melancholy and mellowness acquire an even stronger and more spellbinding presence. “Sincere”, “Unbreakable”, “Fortress”, and “Incendiary” all contain sudden drops in volume and intensity, as the fury of the songs’ verses and choruses gives way to delicate, semi-acoustic passages in the bridges. Meanwhile, songs like “Hollowed”, “Tragedian” and “Vitals” slow down the tempo to ballad-speed, providing cleverly-placed changes of pace to the album as a whole. The progressive and experimental elements of the music also gain prominence in the context of the generally heavy and hard-hitting songwriting, like the sinister and dissonant instrumental bridge of “Icon”, the computerized vocals on the verse of “Violence”, or the majestic use of synthetized strings in the title-track that provide a chilling throwback to the use of Mellotron in classic prog rock (King Crimson).

Memorial is a phenomenal album that works on many different levels. It’s lot of fun to listen to, by virtue of the sheer energy of its songs. But there are also tons of different layers in the music, which get better and better with each new listen as one uncovers new depths in the arrangements and songwriting. The first six tracks, in particular, are among the best the Swedish band has ever penned, with the title-track and the emotional ballad “Hollowed” (featuring a beautiful cameo by Italian pop singer Elisa) deserving special mention. The album’s second half may be a touch less compelling, as tracks like “Incendiary” and “Tragedian” cannot perhaps reach the level of awesomeness of earlier songs. But the progressive tour-de-force “Icon” and the incredible soul/jazz ballad “Vitals” close the album in a spectacular way, almost compelling the listener to press “PLAY” again. In fact, I am finding it nearly impossible to put this record down: it has been haunting my CD player for weeks now, with no intention to leave any time soon. Album of the Year? Very, very possibly so.

[Originally written for The Metal Observer]

lukretion Keyboard wizard Richard Andersson founded Time Requiem after disbanding his previous neoclassical power metal project Majestic. The new band feature both former Majestic’s personnel (singer Apollo Papathanasio, guitarist Magnus Nordh and drummer Peter Wildoer) and new musicians (bassist Dick Lövgren, who will later play with Meshuggah), making for a highly technically proficient line-up. The band’s sound sits somewhere between the typical neoclassic flair of Yngwie Malmsteen and a slightly more symphonic and progressive approach that bring to mind acts such as Royal Hunt. The latter influence is accentuated by the fact that both the Danish band and Time Requiem have a keyboard player as their leader and main songwriter. This means that the keyboards often play lead instrument in the solos as well as in the construction of riffs and melodies. Additionally, there is a symphonic flair in the songs’ arrangements, with the guitars often playing the role that strings would take in an orchestra, offering rhythmic foundation to the music and countermelodies to the keyboards’ main melodic lines.

The symphonic approach is particularly evident in the mid-tempo tracks (“The Aphorism”, “Visions of New Dawn”), where there is more room to develop sophisticated and layered arrangements. Here, singer Apollo Papathanasio at times reminds me of Savatage’s Zak Stevens, with his dramatic tenor voice – adding one further theatrical element to the proceedings. Elsewhere, Time Requiem favour a more compact and speedier approach, more straightforwardly inspired by neoclassic power metal aesthetics (“Watching the Towers of Skies”, “Grand Opus”). Occasionally, subtle progressive ambitions emerge too, as in the opening song “Time Requiem”, with its complex, multi-part structure that allow for multiple recurring themes and tempo changes. This is a direction that I would have liked to see developed more often through the album, as it confers a distinctive identity to the band, setting them apart from other neoclassical power metal acts of the time.

In fact, general lack of originality is probably one thing that bogs this album down somewhat, as Time Requiem sound exactly as you would expect a neoclassical metal band circa 2000 to sound, with all whistles and bells. By 2002, the trick may have stated to become old, although it has to be said that this album offers one of the better examples of the genre overall. Considering the dismal state of affairs among other purveyors of this approach at that time (Yngwie Malmsteen in primis), this is no small feat.

The album’s most serious limitation lies however in the overall struggle to come up with truly memorable and impactful songs. “Milagros Charm” may be the one track that manages to sear itself into the brain of all who listen, by virtue of its irresistible refrain and the outstanding guitar riff that surfaces again and again throughout the song. As already mentioned, “Time Requiem” is also interesting for its richer structure, while the instrumental “Brutal Mentor” offers good thrills, with its full-on speed acrobatics. The other tracks are however much less memorable, humming pleasantly in the background but rarely compelling the listener to really pay attention.

Despite these limitations, Time Requiem’s debut is a strong example of neoclassical metal, well-constructed and smoothly delivered, with excellent performances and technical yet highly melodic playing. The title track’s subtle progressive inclinations are a particularly promising direction I hope the band will follow in subsequent releases, which I will definitely check out soon.

lukretion Released in the early months of 2002, Of Human Bondage marks the final chapter in the second life of German power/thrash/progressive metal band Angel Dust. The band’s first incarnation, active in the 1980s, indulged in a fairly lackluster form of speed/thrash metal that resulted in two LPs. After a long hiatus, Angel Dust returned in the late 1990s with a revolutionized line-up where only drummer Dirk Assmuth and bass player Frank Banx were left from their 1980s incarnation. The new line-up embraced a different sound, retaining some of the ballsy, aggressive pacing and riffage of their speed/thrash days, but combining them with a wider array of influences, ranging from power metal to progressive metal. The end result, which can be appreciated also on Of Human Bondage, is a dark, heavy form of progressive/power metal that nods to bands like Nevermore and Grip Inc as frequently as to acts such as Evergrey, Vanden Plas and Rough Silk.

The album’s main strength lies in the shrewd combination of brutal sonic bludgeoning and majestic melodic openings. The trio of songs that start the album illustrate the approach well. These songs feature massive thrashy riffs, courtesy of the band’s new guitarist, US-born Ritchie Wilkison - clearly a disciple of the US thrash metal scene. The drums are tightly locked with the guitars and bass to form an impressive, fast-paced sonic barrage, on top of which singer Dirk Thurisch busts out his lungs with a voice that instantly brings to mind the immense Warrel Dane. The impact is devastating, taking no prisoners whatsoever. Suddenly, however, the songs veer into chorus sections that feature absolutely irresistible melodies, full of power and melancholy, masterfully interpreted by Dirk Thurisch - one of the most underrated singers in this genre. Steven Banx’s keyboards are also distinctive, with their 1980s retro-futuristic tones adding sudden bursts of colour and projecting the whole album into a different dimension. Truth be told, this overall approach is not radically different from what Nevermore themselves were doing in those years, for instance in their 2000 LP Dead Heart in a Dead World. However, Angel Dust retain a unique, distinctive sound, more germane to the Teutonic speed/power metal tradition.

The album is cleverly constructed, alternating songs that follow the brutal-then-melodic format described earlier, to others that explore slightly different directions, such as the dark, mournful ballads “Disbeliever”and “The Cultman”, cleverly placed at strategic points in the tracklist to provide some respite from the bludgeoning of the other tracks. The album mid-section veers into weirder directions, with “Forever” and “Got This Evil” featuring a certain 1980s hard rock / metal swagger as well as slightly over-the-top vocal melodies (which do not actually work so well in the case of “Got This Evil”).

The biggest surprise, however, is kept for last. The album closes with “Killer”, an unlikely cover of the 1990’s techno/R&B hit penned by DJ Adamski and Seal. This song is hands-down the best metal cover of a non-metal track I have ever heard. It takes Adamski’s iconic bassline and transforms it into a ferocious guitar riff that, combined with the fast-paced drumming and synth loops, inject a sense of urgency and peril to the whole song. Meanwhile, Seal’s enigmatic lyrics and vocal lines take new life through Dirk Thurisch’s menacing, slightly computerized voice. Dark, sinister and futuristic – “Killer” is an instant triumph that closes the album in the best possible way.

It’s hard to find weaknesses in this record, but I am not a big fan of its loud, brickwalled production. I feel that a tad more nuance in the sounds and in the mix, injecting a little bit more dynamics into the music, would have done more justice to the songs. Readers should also be warned that it may take a few listens to fully appreciate what Angel Dust have done here. On first impact, the album may come across as slightly raw and unpolished (perhaps another unfortunate consequence of the production). With time, the songs will unfold and reveal surprising details and nuances, so repeated listening is recommended.

In comparison with the band’s previous albums, Of Human Bondage may perhaps fall short of the grandeur and vision of Angel Dust’s masterpiece, 2000’s Enlighten the Darkness, but it comes off as a close second. It is unclear whether the Angel Dust story will have more chapters yet to be written (the band are currently active, but it has been years since a new album has been announced in the makings). But if Of Human Bondage were to be the final chapter in Angel Dust’s story, it is safe to say that it would have sealed their discography on a remarkably high note.

lukretion Formed in 1998 as a collaboration between Olaf Thörsen (Labÿrinth’s guitarist) and Fabio Lione (Rhapsody of Fire’s and former Labÿrinth’s singer), Vision Divine are a sort of Italian power metal supergroup. In fact, in addition to Thörsen and Lione, the band’s initial line-up comprised two more Labÿrinth’s musicians, Mattia Stancioiu (drums) and Andrea De Paoli (keyboards), as well as bass player Andrea Torricini from relatively lesser-known Italian power metal act Shadows of Steel (where Andrea De Paoli also played).

Based on the curricula of the musicians involved, it would be easy to assume that Vision Divine sound like a mix between Labÿrinth and Rhapsody of Fire. But that would be wrong. Although there are obvious similarities to Labÿrinth (which is inevitable, given that the two bands share 3/5 of their members), it is quite clear that, with Vision Divine, Olaf Thörsen and Fabio Lione were trying to pursue a different sound relative to their respective “main” bands. Power metal lies certainty at the core of Send Me An Angel, but the album also explores different influences, ranging from progressive metal to – perhaps more shockingly- 1980s pop/rock, as the inclusion of A-ha’s 1985 classic “Take on Me” also illustrates.

Generally speaking, the album contains two types of songs. On the one hand, we have a handful of tracks that follow quite closely the stylings of the classic speed/power metal sound, with fast-paced, double-bass drumming, crunchy but melodic guitar riffs, and epic, operatic vocals rich in vibrato and full of pathos. Songs like “Away from You”, “Apocalypse Coming” and “Flame of Hate” is where Vision Divine are most reminiscent of Labÿrinth and similarly-oriented speed/power metal acts. These are also the songs that I find least impressive, as personally I do not feel that they add much to what other bands, including Labÿrinth, were already doing at the time.

Things get considerably more interesting when Vision Divine incorporate in their sound subtle 1980s Euro pop/rock influences, such as on “Send Me an Angel”, “Pain”, “Black & White” and the instrumental “Nemesis”. These influences are perhaps most prominent in Andrea De Paoli’s retro-futuristic keyboard tones that bring to mind bands like Europe (which Vision Divine had covered on their debut album with the classic anthem “The Final Countdown”). The combination of 80s pop/rock glamour and power metal grit – channeled through Lione’s shouted vocals and Thörsen’s powerful melodic riffage, work like a charm, especially when the songwriting also explores slightly unusual solutions, hinting at sly prog metal ambitions. In “Pain”, the pre-chorus surprises with a sudden slow-down in tempo and very melodic vocal lines, before the song picks up again its bludgeoning tempo and riffage. “Black & White” offers again tempo changes aplenty as well as interesting dynamics and excellent interplays between Lione and female singer Ale Gatti. I also love the unexpected keyboard break that follows the first chorus of this song, as well as Lione’s Dickinson-esque vocals on the last part of the choruses. The instrumental “Nemesis” is another favourite of mine, with its keyboard deluge and that recurring, percussive guitar/keyboard riff that for some reason reminds me of the theme song of the movie Rocky.

I wish Vision Divine would have embraced this direction more fully through the whole album, instead of regularly returning to a more standard power metal sound in about half of the songs. In a way, it almost feels like Thörsen and Lione wanted to play it safe, anchoring the album in a sound they knew fans of Labÿrinth and Rhapsody would be comfortable with, instead of embracing full on the more interesting – but risky – 1980s pop/rock leanings they experimented with in the other half of the songs (that A-ha cover being perhaps the most daring experiment of all!).

To these ears, this playing it safe is mildly disappointing and it also makes for a slightly disjointed album overall. However, this does not detract too much from the album’s strengths, which are many – from the excellent production with good balance between guitars and keyboards, to strong performances across the board. Overall, with Send Me An Angel, Vision Divine consolidate their status as a supergroup that is more than just the sum of its parts and whose reason to exist is not mere commercial exploitation of what at the time were the most prominent brand names in the Italian power metal arena. Viewed through this lens, it’s hard not to see Send Me An Angel as a resounding success.

lukretion After the release of their 7th full-length album Tug of War in 2003 and a celebratory live album in 2004, Enchant took a long hiatus that lasted more than a decade. I was convinced this would be the end for the band, especially after their singer Ted Leonard joined Spock’s Beard in 2011. Yet, three years later in 2014 Enchant made a comeback with one more full-length album, The Great Divide, written and recorded by the same line-up of Tug of War. The band disappeared from the scenes once more after this record and remains inactive to date.

I do not know whether the band intended The Great Divide to be a return to their glory days of the late 1990s, when they released their best albums (1998’s Break and 2000’s Juggling 9 or Dropping 10), but if so, it’s hard to see the new LP as a resounding success. In fact, it is even difficult to find traces of Enchant’s early sound in the new album. The new material is quite light-weighted and lacks many of the progressive rock and metal stylings that had once characterized Enchant’s music. The album veers instead more decidedly towards AOR and light mainstream rock territory. These influences had always been present in Enchant’s albums, but in earlier records they had been complemented with a generous coating of progressive complexity and metallic heaviness. This is hardly the case here. One remaining trace of “progginess” on The Great Divide is the songs’ length, which frequently extends beyond the 7-minute mark. However, despite the duration, there is not a lot going on in the music in terms of intricate developments or structures. The songs are instead rooted in standard verse-chorus form with extended instrumental passages that showcase the band’s playing ability (and the solos are indeed quite good!).

The arrangements are generally simple. The guitar is often limited to providing a light, chord-based rhythmic foundation as well as soft melodic leads. The keyboards occupy a much larger portion of the soundscape compared to previous albums and often take a key role in providing melodic counterpoints to Ted Leonard’s vocal lines. These are generally weak, not because Ted is a bad singer (quite the contrary, his voice has always been a major strength for Enchant), but because they feel generic and are rarely memorable. Simply put, the songs are devoid of hooks that could elevate the already pared-down material above averageness.

Ultimately, this is how I would describe this album: neither very bad, nor very good, just simply average. Truth be told, this is also how I felt about Enchant’s previous two records, Blink of an Eye and Tug of War. Those albums, however, had slightly more redeeming qualities than The Great Divide, thanks to more interesting arrangements and a handful of songs that stood out as particularly memorable. This is not the case here, if we exclude opening song “Circles”, which is probably the most accomplished and impactful composition of the album. On that song, Ted Leonard sings “I need a new direction … I need a course correction”, which is actually an apt description of what I wished The Great Divide would do at some point during its course, though it never did.

lukretion If you have been following Enchant’s career, it is hard to miss the obvious Easter eggs the band have placed on the cover of their 7th full-length album, Tug of War. Images taken from all their previous albums appear in the picture, from the LP A Blueprint of the World LP placed at the feet of the mirror, to the iconic billiard-ball from Juggling 9 or Dropping 10 lying on the floor, to posters of Wounded and Blink of an Eye on the wall. When I first saw it, I wondered whether, by providing such retrospective, the band were trying to subtly tell fans time had arrived for curtain call. I was almost proved right given that after this album Enchant went into hibernation for 11 long years, before making a sporadic comeback in 2014 with the mediocre The Great Divide to then disband once again. So were Enchant planning to send us off on a high note or a low note?

Unfortunately, Tug of War continues the downward trajectory of Enchant’s previous album Blink of an Eye and it is a further step down compared to their best works, 1998’s Break and 2000’s Juggling 9 or Dropping 10. The new material is actually not terribly different from the songs included on those albums, but feels less inspired and less compelling. The album’s core sonic identity is once again a simplified form of progressive rock, where AOR and mainstream pop/rock aesthetics are weaved together with the influences of classic and modern prog greats (Rush, Kansas, Marillion, Spock’s Beard) and reinterpreted with a hint of metallic bite (Dream Theater). Doug Ott’s guitar plays predominantly a soft rhythmic role, with light chords and arpeggios, letting Ed Platt steer the material into more metallic directions with his meaty bass licks. Meanwhile, new keyboard player Bill Jenkins adds minimal texture with sound effects and keyboard chords and drummer Sean Flanegan focuses more on groove than rhythmic extravaganza.

The end result is a layered but unobtrusive texture that leaves a lot of space to singer Ted Leonard’s vocal melodies. Alas, these are not very compelling because they often tend to be slightly too convoluted and rarely have immediate appeal. Partly, this may be due to the songs’ complex harmonic developments, which leave Ted struggling to find good melodies to bridge the unorthodox chord progressions. This has been an unfortunate constant throughout the band’s career, with the exception of Juggling 9 or Dropping 10 which stands as their most accessible and accomplished record to date.

Overall, Tug of War is not a bad record, but it isn’t strong either. It is well played and well arranged, but its greatest drawback is that it dabbles in mostly harmless and generic progressive rock. The listening experience is far from compelling. Very few tracks standout, and they are mostly concentrated at the start (“Sinking Sand”, “Holding the Wind”) or end of the record (the proggy instrumental “Progtology”, “Comatose”), which makes the middle part of the album quite challenging to go through. Longtime fans may still find enough good material to enjoy Tug of War, but if you are new to Enchant, you’d be better served by digging into their earlier – and superior – releases.

lukretion As far as I am concerned, Enchant’s 5th full-length album is the pinnacle of their discography. The upward trajectory had already started with the previous album Break, where the US band had managed to find a more personal sound, blending together elements from classic progressive rock, prog metal and AOR / maninstream rock in a way that set them apart from other similar prog bands: Enchant felt less cerebral than Spock’s Beard, less heavy than Dream Theater, but proggier than Kansas. On Juggling 9 or Dropping 10, the band further develop those aesthetics, enhancing the weight of each component while at the same time perfecting the balance between them.

The album is proggier than Break, not so much in terms of the amount of technical extravaganza included in each song, but in the adventurousness of the songwriting. While the songs never get overly complex, their structure is dilated with numerous instrumental breaks and detours. These can get quite wild and exciting, such as the flamenco interjection in the middle of “Bite My Tongue”. Elsewhere Doug Ott’s jittery guitar riffs duel with melodic bass lines and keyboard leads, while Paul Craddick’s drum patterns strike a perfect balance between groove and nuance. At times, dissonances and unusual harmonic developments are used, sparsely and with great effect. Some of the arrangements reminded me of Spock’s Beard – with which Enchant had toured in the previous year -, but Enchant maintain a more accessible and streamlined approach than Spock’s.

The accessibility and memorability of the compositions is where Juggling 9 or Dropping 10 makes big strides forward compared to Break. The quality of the melodies has improved a lot since the previous album. We are still not exactly in the domain of ear-worming hooks, as Ted Leonard’s vocal lines generally follow more nuanced and elusive contours than what would quality as straight poppy ear-candy. But some of the hooks here are rather infectious, particularly in “Bite My Tongue”, “Juggling Knives” and “What to Say”, which is easily the best song Enchant have written throughout their career. What makes the song truly special is also the deep and highly emotional subject matter – about incurable illness and the awareness that the day you have to say goodbye to your loved ones is drawing nearer. Ted Leonard’s interpretation is simply spellbinding and goosebumps are guaranteed by the time you reach the end of the track.

While “What to Say” is undoubtedly the high point of the record, both emotionally and sonically, several other songs leave a strong mark on the listener, making Juggling 9 or Dropping 10 the most consistent album of the band. There are no fillers or duds here, except perhaps “Elyse” which feels slightly bland in comparison to the other tracks. One may raise issues with the fact that many of the songs tend to feature similar tempos, structures and moods (with many exploring the same theme of illness). This is a characteristic that Juggling 9 or Dropping 10 share with many other Enchant’s albums and it is probably one of the limits of the US band. A tad more variation in the songwriting could have probably elevated this and other albums even further.

Despite these minor issues, Juggling 9 or Dropping 10 is where everything fell perfectly into place for Enchant. Inspired songwriting, classy arrangements, top-notch musicianship and some of the best melodies written by the band make this album a must-have for any progressive rock or metal fan. The rest of the band’s discography is also worth exploring, but Juggling 9 or Dropping 10 is the place to start if you are new to this band.

lukretion Enchant’s 6th full-length, Blink of an Eye, attempts to follow the same template of their previous LP, Juggling 9 or Dropping 10, released two years earlier and still regarded by many as the high point of their discography. However, one big change occurred between the two records: long-time band member Paul Craddick left Enchant and was replaced by Sean Flanegan. With Paul’s departure, Enchant did not only lose a phenomenal drummer, but also a gifted songwriter who had penned many songs in their previous albums. On Blink of an Eye guitarist Doug Ott took charge of all the songwriting and, although he himself has written some fantastic songs for Enchant, the lack of a songwriting partner is a clear drawback that bogs the album down somewhat.

The main problem with Doug’s material for this album is that is too homogeneous and, for the most part, formulaic. The new record features the classy arrangements and top-notch musicianship that one can find in all Enchant’s albums. However, the songwriting is slightly safer and less adventurous, with fewer contaminations with other styles. The key influence on Blink of an Eye seems to be Marillion circa 1990s, with a lot of focus on layered arrangements and mellow e-bow leads that create a dense but unobtrusive background allowing maximum space to Ted Leonard’s voice. New drummer Sean Flanegan is perfect for this type of material, as he is a straighter drummer than Paul Craddick, more visceral and groovy, but also less imaginative and nuanced. Occasionally, Enchant unleash their proggy side and let loose in fun instrumental breaks that bring to mind Spock’s Beard, but overall Blink of an Eye is considerably less prog-oriented than Break or Juggling 9 or Dropping 10, favouring texture and atmosphere over complexity and displays of technical proficiency.

The general toning down of progginess wouldn’t be a problem per se, if Blink of an Eye could supply strong and memorable vocal melodies on top of its mellow soundscapes. Alas, the band’s Achilles heel has always been their inability to write really catchy melodies, and Blink of an Eye is no exception. Most melodies are slightly convoluted and dull. No matter how many times I listen to the album, the songs are elusive and hard to memorize. Inevitably, a lot of the material flows away inconspicuously, blurring together. Only a handful of songs stand out. “Under Fire” may be the strongest of the lot in terms of accessibility and quality of the melodies. “Monday” is proggy and fun, dialling up the Spock’s Beard influences. “Follow the Sun” veers into mainstream rock territory and features gorgeous vocal harmonies, while “Despicable” provides an energetic and engaging closure to the album.

Overall, Blink of an Eye is a step down compared to the beautiful Juggling 9 or Dropping 10 and it is probably slightly inferior to Break as well. Despite the continuity in terms of sound and style relative to those two albums, the material included here feels somewhat generic and uninspired. The dearth of truly compelling tunes makes the 54 minutes of the album somewhat a chore to sit through, but the quality of the playing and the class of the arrangements are undeniable and ultimately save the record from a lower score.

lukretion It took US prog rockers Enchant a couple of albums to find a unique sound and direction. Their 4th full-length Break is where things finally started falling into place, after three slightly more derivative albums, inspired initially by neoprogressive rock (Marillion) and later by prog metal in the vein of Dream Theater. On Break, Enchant seem to have metabolized both of those influences to arrive at a more personal sound, halfway between progressive rock, prog metal and AOR / mainstream rock.

The album brims with the type of highly-proficient playing and glossy, sophisticated arrangements that you would expect to find on a prog rock record. All songs feature intricate but elegant interplays between guitars, keyboards and bass – the latter frequently also playing a prominent melodic role, which may draw parallels to Rush. The musicians’ technical level is very high, but they never get carried away with excessive, showy noodling, but they instead always play to the song. The harmonic structures are complex, often veering towards jazz territory. Paul Craddick’s drumming is classy and imaginative and at times reminiscent of Rush’s drummer Neil Peart. The production is polished and airy, which allows to appreciate the nuances of the musicians’ playing (though it may lack a bit of bite when things get sonically heated).

While the arrangements are complex and layered, structurally the songs are much more straightforward, generally following a standard verse-chorus format, with occasional digressions in the form of bridges or instrumental breaks. The linear structures are a nudge towards radio-friendly rock, which one can also find in the highly melodic vocal lines. Singer Ted Leonard interprets the vocal melodies soulfully with his pristine, powerful voice, at times reminiscent of Steve Walsh (Kansas). This balance between complex progginess and radio-friendly accessibility is a distinctive characteristics of Enchant’s sound throughout their career, and it is the reason why sometimes they are described as a “soft progressive rock” band.

The melodies are however one of my main gripes with Break. They generally possess an elusive quality that rarely makes them overtly catchy – certainly nothing even remotely close to what one would call an “earworm”. Generally, this may not be a bad thing, since staying clear of cheap ear-candy often improves the repeated listening value of an album. However, things start to get complicated if even after listening to the album several times, one cannot still remember a single vocal line from the record. I am perhaps exaggerating here, since songs like “King”, “My Enemy”, “The Lizard” and “My Gavel Hand” do leave a mark on the listener. The other songs, however, are much less accessible and memorable, and flow away almost unnoticed. This effect is accentuated by the fact that many songs are quite similar to one another in terms of structure, tempo and mood, so they tend to blend together somewhat, especially between “Defenseless” and “Silence”.

All in all and despite the generally high quality of the material, many of the tracks included in this album fall short of making a big impact on the listener. I do not think it is by accident that only two songs from Break (the title-track and “My Enemy”) will eventually be included in the double-disc live album Enchant will release a few years later. Having said that, Break remains a quality record, full of classy playing, intelligent arrangements and a handful of excellent song too (“My Enemy” is truly splendid).

lukretion While Time Lost has the duration of a LP (and it is in fact widely regarded as Enchant’s third full-length album), the band’s original intention was to release an EP to accompany their latest studio record, 1996’s Wounded. The EP was supposed to contain 4 tracks taken from the same writing sessions that gave life to Wounded. However, inspired by the retrospective nature of the album, Enchant decided to cast their net further back into the past and include 3 more tracks taken from the band’s very early days, before they even recorded their first studio LP A Blueprint of the World. Thus, Time Lost’s length grew to 53 minutes and 25 seconds, gaining somewhat controversially the status of full-length in the band’s discography.

When regarded as a proper full-length album, Time Lost disappoints because the heterogeneous material that the record is compiled of, does not make for a smooth, cohesive listening experience. The first 4 tracks follow the more accessible and heavier approach Enchant embraced on Wounded, with more focus on guitar riffs and hooks rather than on the technical complexity and intricate arrangements that are typical of progressive rock. In the remaining 3 songs, however, Enchant turn the tables and fully embrace their proggy side, with multipart structures, long instrumental sections, layered arrangements and guitar/keyboard solo pyrotechnics, in a style that is more reminiscent of the band’s debut album A Blueprint of the World. The change in aesthetics between the two sets of songs is too conspicuous to go unnoticed, as it’s almost like having two albums crammed in one single release.

However, if one takes the album in the spirit in which it was originally intended – as a compilation of “leftover” material – it’s hard not to marvel at the quality of the songs included here. The four “Wounded” tracks are as good as, if not better than, the material that was actually included in Wounded, to the point that I do not quite understand why they did not make the final cut. “Blind Sided”, in particular, is awesome and features excellent dynamic transitions from the moody verses to the rousing choruses, strong melodies, and really great atmospheres. It somewhat reminds me of “Pure” from Wounded, which may be the reason why the song was eventually excluded from that album’s tracklist. “New Moon” and “Foundations” are also strong tracks, maybe a tad too fragmented in their development, which is probably due to their “rawer” form compared to the songs eventually included in Wounded (“Foundations”, in particular, was the last song written during the Wounded recording sessions and so did not have a lot of time to “mature” into a fully-fledged Enchant track, as the album’s liner notes explain). The three “early-days” songs are also very good and will especially appeal to those who consider A Blueprint of the World one of Enchant’s best releases. These songs feature a mix of original recordings (“Mettle Men” even features Enchant’s original bass player Brian Cline) and new recordings by Enchant’s 1997 line-up. These songs are perhaps slightly meandering and overly complex, giving away the signs of the band’s youthful exuberance at the time they were written, but they do contain some awesome sections nevertheless.

All this makes Time Lost an odd album to rate. It contains some of the best material Enchant have released through their discography, including some of their most sing-alongable tracks ever (“Blind Sided”, “Foundations”). The fact that these songs did not make it on the final tracklists of the band’s previous albums - A Blueprint of the World and Wounded – befuddles me. However, no matter how good these songs are, they just do not work well together as part of the same LP, as the stylistic gap between the first and second set of tracks is simply too vast. So here is the gist: Time Lost works great as a compilation/EP, but lacks the consistency I normally seek in a proper full-length record.

lukretion Sophomore albums don’t come easy and Wounded, Enchant's second full-length, is no exception. The US prog rockers had debuted three years earlier with A Blueprint of the World, a strong album showcasing all their rich neoprogressive inclinations. On Wounded the band considerably dial back those influences, choosing instead a more direct approach by both simplifying and “metalizing” their sound. Was this a change for the better? It’s hard to say. On the one hand, the new approach will be pivotal for the development of Enchant’s sound in subsequent albums. So, in a way, Wounded is an obligatory passage point for the band’s future. On the other hand, it’s hard to deny that Wounded is overall a step-back in terms of quality of songwriting compared to their previous record. In fact, after the opening three songs, the album quickly sinks into a sea of forgettable averageness from which it never recovers.

In many ways, Wounded is a unique-sounding album in Enchant’s catalogue. It’s their heaviest record by far, mainly thanks to guitarist Doug Ott’s newfound approach, as he mostly abandons his signature light-touch, clean-tone, vaguely jazzy playing in favour of more distortion and riffing. This brings the songs closer to the typical prog metal sound, with the music’s backbone mainly comprised of rhythmic but melodic guitar licks, often doubled by Ed Platt’s bass. Drummer Paul Craddick complements the new approach well, with a punchier and groovier performance that considerably limits his usual complex and variegated playing. Even vocalist Ted Leonard adapts his singing to embrace the new direction, by injecting more power into his voice with a performance that is at times reminiscent of Dream Theater’s James LaBrie.

This heavier direction is complemented by a general simplification of the arrangements and songwriting. The songs are now more chorus-focused, with a structure that consists of repeated verse-chorus sequences interrupted by instrumental sections that give Doug Ott and keyboard player Michael Geimer some room to engage in their usual duelling solos. The arrangements are also more straightforward, with fewer changes between songs’ sections, making the music more accessible compared to the debut album. The song length, however, has not decreased much – and in fact all tracks go beyond the 6-minute mark. Given the more direct nature of the material, this is not exactly a good thing, as many songs tend to overstay their welcome with excessive repetitions that do not add much to the overall effect.

The main problem of this album, however, is that a lot of the songs are quite generic and average – lacking strong melodies or interesting arrangements that can fully engage the listener. In fact, Enchant seem to have spent their best ideas in the first three album’s tracks, “Below Zero”, “Fade 2 Grey” and “Pure”. The opening track is absolutely phenomenal – one of Enchant’s best songs tout court. Here the new heavy/direct approach really shines, in Doug Ott’s crunchy riff and Ted Leonard’s beautiful, gritty vocal approach. “Fade 2 Grey” is interesting because it features hints of the band’s classic prog rock style, but mixed to the new heavier direction, while “Pure” stands out thanks to its beautiful dynamics and another excellent performance by Ted. The remaining six song, however, are nowhere near the quality level of the opening trio – perhaps with the exception of the gutsy “Look Away”. There is nothing particularly wrong with these tracks, except that they sound terribly middle-of-the-road and very similar to one another, making the second half of the album quite difficult to sit through without losing focus. The slightly muddy and rough production does not help either - another step back compared to some of the excellent-sounding songs included in A Blueprint of the World.

All considered, it’s hard not to see Wounded as a transitional record – and Enchant will in fact quickly change direction on their next (proper) full-length Break, after the interlocutory EP/LP Time Lost. Wounded is nevertheless an important stepping stone for Break and all the albums that will follow. While Enchant will by and large stay away from the heavy, riff-laden sound one can hear on this album, the simplified, more direct approach that they pioneered on Wounded will be a constant characteristic of the band’s future sound. Thus, while not my favourite Enchant’ album, Wounded has definitely a place in the band’s discography as an essential bridge to their true sonic identity.

lukretion After a handful of demos, in 1993 US prog rockers Enchant released their debut full-length A Blueprint of the World via Dream Circle Records. It is a strong debut, already showcasing all the qualities that Enchant will put on display through the rest of their career: incredibly skilled playing combined with a taste for classy arrangements and great balance between accessible mainstream rock and the intricacies of progressive music. Truth be told, A Blueprint of the World is tilted more towards the latter than the former, with the influences of prog rock giants, old (Genesis, Yes, Rush) and new (Marillion), looming large in the album’s ten songs. Marillion in particular were a prominent influence at this stage of Enchant’s career - and Marillion’s guitarist Steve Rothery does indeed feature on this album both as guest player and as producer of about half of the songs (the rest being produced by Paul A. Schmidt together with Enchant’s guitarist Doug Ott).

The style follows the aesthetics of neoprogressive rock music, with arrangements that are layered and complex, but at the same time light and pleasant to the ear. Guitars and keyboards provide most of the texture, often alternating in taking the lead at different moments of the songs. In either case, you’d be hard pressed to find anything “heavy” in the way Doug Ott and Michael Geimer are playing – as both guitars and keyboards favour clean tones, arpeggios and simple chords progressions over heavy and intense playing. Ed Platt’s bass licks are perhaps the closest the album gets to “riffs”, in the classic metal sense of the term of simple, repeated melodic figures that also provide a rhythmical pulse. Meanwhile, Paul Craddick’s drumming dances around Ed’s pulse, with a flurry of rhythmic activity and a touch that is beautifully light and clean.

There is a lot to unpack in each song, as the arrangements are fluid and keep changing from section to section, adding intricacies as the songs develop. However, the listener is almost never overburdened by the complexity, also thanks to structures that rarely get overly intricate and stick instead to a slightly elongated verse-chorus formula that roots the songs in a healthy dose of mainstream accessibility. Ted Leonard’s beautiful voice is the other element that eases the listener in. Already from this first album, it was clear that Ted is one of the best singers in progressive rock, with a voice that is pristine and soulful, but at the same time packs incredible power. It is no coincidence that a few years after recording this debut with Enchant, Ted will become the frontman of Spock’s Beard, one of the best progressive rock acts in the world.

However, one aspect of Ted’s singing that is slightly disappointing is the lack of strong melodies that can truly burrow in the listener’s head. This is something that will characterize most of Enchant’s discography, for reasons I do not quite fully understand, but I suspect are due to both the songs’ fairly complex harmonic progressions and to an intentional drive to eschew “easy” singalong melodies. To be fair, A Blueprint of the World does contain some excellent hooks, especially compared to other albums in Enchant’s catalogue, such as “The Thirst”, “Acquaintance”, “At Death's Door” or “Nighttime Sky”. But even these songs require multiple listens before the melodies truly “click”, which may be a barrier for some listeners.

Another barrier – and weakness – of the album is the lack of consistency, both in the songwriting and production. Being a debut, it is quite understandable the band wanted to throw in as much of their material as possible, even if not everything would necessarily blend together well. However, at times this approach ruins the flow of the album. “Enchanted”, for example, sticks out like a sore thumb, with its fantasy lyrics and epic atmospheres, when the rest of the album is very much grounded in reality. The alternation between Steve Rothery and Paul A. Schmidt as producers is also far from ideal. I can see why the band decided to ask Steve Rothery for help, as the tracks he produced are much better sounding than those produced by Paul A. Schmidt. However, the fact that these two sets of songs lie side by side on the same LP does not make for a smooth listening experience, and I cannot help but wonder whether Enchant would have been better off leaving the worse-produced tracks aside.

Despite these mishaps, A Blueprint of the World is a very good album, showcasing Enchant’s great talent and potential. The album may not be everyone’s cup of tea, as it is quite rooted in 1980s / early 1990s neoprogressive rock, more than metal. But fans of classic prog and more contemporary progressive rock/metal should not miss out on this band and album.

lukretion Hanging Garden, the melodic doomsters hailing from Finland, have been on a creative roll lately, releasing three new records in less than 24 months. Following their 2021 full-length Skeleton Lake, the band released the EP Neither Moth nor Rust in early 2022. Now, they are back with their eight full-length record titled The Garden. As the album’s near self-title suggests, the band envisioned it as a sort of magnum opus encapsulating the quintessence of their musicality, constantly balanced between light and darkness, melody and heaviness. Without further delay, let’s then enter The Garden and discover the treasures that lie within.

Right from the start, the title-track sets the perfect ambience for the record that we have come to expect from Hanging Garden. The tempo is slow-paced, with the drums locked in a barren pattern of kick/snare and open/closed hi-hat notes that remains mostly constant throughout the track, emphasizing its plumbeous atmosphere. A slowly downpicked rhythm guitar adds to the gloomy vibe, while the lead guitar and keyboards provide contrast by weaving in slow, melancholic melodies and dreamy textures. The same interplay of light and dark is achieved through the layered vocal arrangements. Riikka Hatakka provides soothing, ethereal vocals, while her brother Toni Hatakka alternates between languid cleans and cavernous growls. The song structure is fluid, loosely based on recurring themes but without the predictable alternation between rigidly-defined verses and chorus. It’s a complex, dynamic, multi-layered composition that envelopes the listener with a thick blanket of melancholy, while offering lingering rays of light and hope. This evokes the same type of mellow, soul-piercing atmosphere we may find in the music of bands like Swallow the Sun or (for those who remember them) early EverEve.

Hanging Garden maintain this delicate balance throughout the album, gradually incorporating additional influences into their artistic palette. Songs such as “The Construct” and “The Nightfall” pay homage to Type O Negative, with clean vocals reminiscent of Peter Steele, while “The Song of Spring” and “The Fire at First Dawn” delve further into gothic atmospheres with a touch of Paradise Lost and Anathema. In other tracks, the extreme metal influences become more prominent, nudging the music towards the territory of melodic death metal (Insomnium and Dark Tranquillity, in particular). Overall, compared to their previous record Skeleton Lake, Hanging Garden seem to have shed some of the catchy gothic gimmicks in favor of a sound that is both heavier and more atmospheric.

Although The Garden’s 11 songs create pleasant soundscapes, the album still falls short of escaping the same pitfalls found in the band’s previous work. At 48 minutes of length, the lack of variation in pace, structure and ambience can be a drag. This is particularly noticeable in the mellower mid-section of the LP, where tracks between “The Fire at First Dawn” and “The Journey” tend to blur together, lacking strongly distinctive elements that differentiate them. Partly, this also reflects the band’s tendency to frontload their albums, which was also the case with the previous LP. The opening four songs contain the most inspired material, and listeners have to wait until the closing track “The Resolute” to experience the same strong response triggered in the first 20 minutes of the LP. However, even at its best, it’s hard to ignore the feeling that The Garden stays always too close to its influences, particularly Swallow the Sun. With around 50/60 new metal albums released each week, creative personality and originality are crucial to stand out from the crowd, and Hanging Garden fall somewhat short in this respect.

Overall, The Garden is an album that simmers rather than erupts, relying on its overall cinematic atmosphere to convey its beauty instead of catchy tunes that immediately grab you. While it may not reach the magnum opus status the band intended, it remains a strong example of melodic gothic doom/death metal that will no doubt please fans of Hanging Garden as well as other bands mentioned in this review.

[Originally written for The Metal Observer]

lukretion As a huge Evergrey fan, I was very intrigued by the announcement made in 2017 by US progressive metal band Redemption that they would be replacing their longstanding vocalist Ray Alder (Fates Warning) with the mastermind behind Swedish power/prog titans Evergrey, Tom Englund. However, when their first album together, Long Night's Journey into Day, was released in 2018, it didn't quite meet my (admittedly high) expectations. I felt that the band played it too safe and didn't fully take advantage of Englund's incredible voice. Now, fast forward to 2023, and Redemption has returned with a new album, once again featuring Englund on vocals. I Am the Storm, the band's eighth studio album, is released on March 17th via AFM Records, and it has completely pulverized all of my previous concerns and reservations about their previous LP.

I Am the Storm is one of the best “traditional progressive metal” albums I have listened in quite a while. When I say “traditional progressive metal”, I mean that Redemption’s sound has remained largely unaffected by the post-metal/pop/djent contaminations that many contemporary prog metal acts have embraced in recent years. Instead, this album stays true to the US prog metal sound that was established in the late 90s and early 00s by bands such as Dream Theater, Fates Warning and Symphony X. The guitars play a central role in the sound design, with an onslaught of riffs and melodic leads. The busy rhythm section is powerful, with thunderous beats, while the keyboards are used in moderation to add color and texture to the dense metallic soundscape. Meanwhile, Englund's vocals are skillfully woven in and out of these textures, allowing ample space for lengthy instrumental sections.

This is not to say, however, that there aren’t modern contaminations and exciting sonic experiments present. In fact, Redemption incorporate a diverse set of influences into their sound, including ferocious thrash metal, classic progressive rock (as evidenced by the Genesis/Peter Gabriel covers included on the LP), and more modern, post-rock-influenced atmospheric soundscapes (“The Emotional Depiction Of Light”). The end result is an album that manages to feel fresh and varied, while at the same time retaining a clear and distinctive sonic identity.

With I Am the Storm there is a clear sense that Redemption took risks in their songwriting that ultimately paid off in a big way. The different influences that have shaped Redemption’s sound over the years have been taken to new extremes on this album. The heavy tracks (“I Am the Storm”, “Resilience”) hit unashamedly hard and approach a degree of metallic ferocity that would not be out of place on a Nevermore album. On the other hand, “The Emotional Depiction Of Light” lies at the opposite end of the spectrum, with its delicate interplay between Englund’s voice and Vikram Shankar’s piano, building to a beautiful cathartic crescendo that tugs at the heartstrings in a way reminiscent of Anathema or Silent Skies (Englund and Shankar's recent atmospheric metal project). Between these extremes, I Am the Storm offers a plethora of sublime progressive pieces. “Remember the Dawn”, “Action At A Distance” and “All This Time (And Not Enough)” are longer pieces with complex structures, plenty of virtuoso playing, and subtle references to the classic progressive rock sound, reminding me of a slightly heavier version of bands like Spock’s Beard or Enchant.

The names mentioned in the previous paragraphs indicate that the album covers a lot of ground. Yet, it does so with finesse and sophistication, allowing for smooth and natural transitions between the different styles. I also feel that with the new material, Redemption have finally discovered how to unlock Englund's full potential. His performance on I Am the Storm is undoubtedly his best in a while. Although I adore Englund's distinctive and poignant voice, it's difficult to ignore the fact that in his recent work with Evergrey he has stuck to a pattern of similar melodies and cadences that may comfortably suit his voice, but can also make the songs feel monotonous. On I Am the Storm Nick Van Dyk’s diverse songwriting challenges Englund to step out of his comfort zone and experiment with his voice, sometimes with more aggression and other times with more melody. This is similar to the approach taken on Evergrey's early and highly progressive LPs, where Englund first established himself as one of the finest singers in the genre. It’s a joy to rediscover his versatility and tremendous class on this new record.

The rest of the band also delivers incredible performances, with Van Dyk’s showcasing his terrific guitar skills, ranging from heavy and aggressive to sublimely melodic. Shankar adds beautiful synth textures, while Chris Quirarte on drums and Sean Andrews on bass provide a solid and ultra-heavy rhythmic backbone. Special recognition also goes to Simone Mularoni (DGM) for his jaw-dropping and exquisitely well-constructed solos. His mixing and mastering jobs are also commendable, although the guitars may be slightly too prominent in the mix and the drums may be too busy, taking away some nuance from the other instruments.

In the end, however, the standout feature of I Am the Storm is the incredible quality of its songwriting. In contrast to Redemption’s previous LP Long Night's Journey into Day, there are no filler tracks on this album. Each song delivers some of the finest progressive metal you're likely to hear this year: technically intricate and fiercely heavy, but always exquisitely melodic. Prog metal fans should not overlook this album: I Am the Storm is Album of the Year material, and Redemption’s greatest artistic achievement yet.

[Originally written for The Metal Observer]

lukretion Katatonia are a bona fide metal institution. With 12 full-length albums under their belt, the Stockholm-based trailblazers have been leaders in redefining the sound of the genre, building from their death/doom origins in the 1990s to gradually incorporate post-rock, dark rock, and progressive metal elements into their music. On January, 20th, 2023 the band will release their latest effort Sky Void of Stars via Napalm Records. Comprised of 10 songs (plus 1 bonus-track), once again all penned by vocalist and founding member Jonas Renkse, the anticipation for the follow-up to 2020’s City Burials is sky high. Can the dark metal icons pull off yet another masterpiece? Or are the years taking a toll on their creativity?

These were some of the questions going through my head as I pressed “PLAY” to stream the promo provided by Napalm Records. My trepidation was further enhanced by the fact that I wasn’t overly impressed with the band’s previous LP City Burials - an album that walked a fine line between understated mellowness and plodding torpor, but did not always manage to stay on the right side of it. Fortunately, Sky Void of Stars blew all my concerns out of the water, and stands magnificently as one of the best albums Katatonia ever made.

With the new LP, the Swedes have attempted something very bold. They have taken the most distinctive aspects of their sound over the last 20 years, and pushed each separate element to a further extreme, all in the space of the same record. If you have been following the release of the three album singles, you will know exactly what I mean. The first single “Atrium” was a gloriously catchy, deceptively simple goth tune that could by all means be a new “Teargas” or “My Twin” for the band. Next, Katatonia dropped “Austerity”, an incredible tour-de-force that manages to distillate in just under 4 minutes the essence of modern progressive metal, from angular riffing to complex polyrhythms, all without losing sight of melody. The final single “Birds” took us yet on another stylistic turn: it’s a more straightforward, heavier piece that harks back to the sound Katatonia pioneered in the early 2000s, on their Viva Emptiness album in particular, with its austere atmosphere, sinister melodies and urgent pacing.

Taken together, the three singles capture exactly what you can expect to find on Sky Void of Stars: catchy, electronic-laden gothic anthems, punishing progressive beasts, and heavy-hitting slabs of sinister dark metal. “Hang on a second”, you ask, “how can these disparate styles coexist on the same LP?”. While the three singles may point to a scattershot album that does not quite know which direction to take, the real beauty of Sky Void of Stars lies in how naturally and elegantly Katatonia managed to weave together these different sonic niches to form a strikingly coherent whole.

A lot of it has to do with the sequencing of the tracklist. The way it keeps building and releasing tension - alternating driving uptempos with mellower songs, heavy demanding pieces with sudden bursts of melodic accessibility - is absolutely pitch-perfect. The shifts are gradual and natural. Take the first three tracks on the LP. Opener “Austerity” takes no prisoners. Drummer Daniel Moilanen is on fire: his urgent, tentacular performance is astonishing, making it almost impossible to count the time signatures. Niklas Sandin’s pulsating bass is no less impressive both in the faster, more technically demanding parts and in the mellower jazzy bridge. Meanwhile, Anders Nyström and Roger Öjersson churn out some beautifully complex riffs, before Öjersson unleashes a shimmering solo halfway through the song (the first of many he performs on this record). Renkse’s voice is warm and inviting as usual, but his melodies are oblique and unpredictable, making for a rather claustrophobic start to the album. How do you come down from such a high-pressure, high-impact track? “Colossal Shade” dials things down gradually with its catchier melodies, bouncy mid-tempo and poppy electronic undertones, but there is a darkness lurking beneath the surface, in the heavy chug of the guitars and the dissonant bridge, which ushers in those Viva Emptiness vibes I was mentioning earlier. With “Opaline”, the comedown is complete. Together with “Atrium”, the song is probably the most accessible of the whole album, with its infectious electro-goth undercurrents and mellow keyboard lines, all converging into a majestic, melancholy-infused chorus that brings to mind the band’s best work on The Great Cold Distance.

The rest of the album ebbs and flows in a similar fashion. “Birds” and “Author” dial up the tension again - the latter packing a lugubrious chorus that takes me way back to those early Katatonia albums where Renkse had just started experimenting with clean-vocal (but pitch-black) melodies (Tonight’s Decision; Discouraged Ones). The mellow, vaguely psychedelic “Drab Moon” softens the blows, while “Impermanence” is a spellbinding heavy ballad that features co-vocals by Joel Ekelöf (Soen) as well as some beautifully mournful guitar leads that hark back to the band’s early doom days. “Sclera” is a masterpiece in understatement, with its barely hinted melodies, scattered drumming and evocative electronic effects. The crescendo from verse to pre-chorus to chorus is mesmerizing, and builds the perfect tension for the subsequent track “Atrium”, which is the other melodic centrepiece of the album after “Opaline”. Sky Void of Stars closes as it started, with another crushingly progressive piece. This time extending to over 6 minutes in length, “No Beacon To Illuminate Our Fall” is an ever-changing beast that builds on twisted riffs and bleak vocal lines that keep mutating and evolving, leaving the listener with little to latch on and no clear sense of what may come next.

The record is further graced by a masterful production by Danish wizard Jacob Hansen: warm and natural, yet clinically clean, it achieves a beautiful separation between frequencies in the mix, ensuring that each instrument is clearly heard at all times, from Sandin’s bass, to the two guitars, to the keyboard effects, to Moilanen’s various drum components. The end result is particularly admirable when one considers how richly textured the music is. The keyboards and electronic effects are omnipresent, but so are the drums and the guitars - the latter playing a much more prominent role than on City Burials. As a consequence, Sky Void of Stars feels heavier and fuller than its predecessor, but this is accomplished without sacrificing nuance or clarity.

With of Sky Void of Stars Katatonia have tried something bold and ambitious: to condense in the space a single LP the vast universe of styles and influences they have taken on board in the course of their three-decade career - from doom, to gothic metal, to electronica, to progressive rock. What’s more - instead of attempting to find a compromise between the different styles within each song, they pushed each different style to the fore across a different set of songs, merging them then into a coherent narrative by means of gradual shifts in tension and expressivity. In many ways, this is reminiscent of what Katatonia tried to do on City Burials, but with much better results, as the new album sounds crisper and more dynamic, and it achieves a better balance between mellow and upbeat moments as well as between guitar-driven music and futuristic electronic elements.

The flip side of this ambitious endeavour is that Sky Void of Stars is not an easy record to take in: there is a lot going on and the album requires a dedicated investment in time and active listening on the part of the audience. It is, however, worthy of every second of your time, because Sky Void of Stars is absolutely brilliant, and perhaps even the pinnacle of the Katatonia’s entire discography.

[Originally written for The Metal Observer]

lukretion Polish prog metallers Riverside are back with their new full-length album ID.Entity released worldwide via InsideOut on January, 20. The new LP is the first with Maciej Meller as a permanent member on guitar, after the tragic death of the band’s original guitar player Piotr Grudziński in 2016. The rest of the line-up is completed by Mariusz Duda (bass, vocals), Piotr Kozieradzki (drums) and Michał Łapaj (keyboards), who have now been playing together in Riverside for over twenty years.

Despite the remarkable stability in the band’s line-up, ID.Entity shakes things up considerably as far as its sound is concerned, and it is probably one of the most unique and diverse albums in Riverside’s discography so far. Fear not, though: the band’s sound is still firmly rooted in that special hybrid of prog rock and metal that Riverside have been perfecting for more than two decades now. The songs strike a great balance between accessibility and technical complexity. The structure is rich, with multiple interconnected sections and returning motifs, but there are always prominent melodic lines to guide the listener through the ebbs and flows of each of composition. There are also plenty of staccato riffs and intricate polyrhythms that prog fans can sink their teeth into, and a very prominent bass sound for the pleasure of 4-string enthusiasts. The playing is sublime as always by all musicians involved, with Michał Łapaj’s keyboards striking me as particularly inspired on the new songs.

So far things may feel familiar. However, there are also some clear departures from the sound Riverside developed in previous records. The new songs are much more upbeat and uptempo than usual, shaking off that dense sense of melancholy that had almost become a hallmark of Riverside’s albums, especially the last few ones. The sound is also slightly more metallic and heavier, throwing us back to the early, hard-hitting Riverside’s LPs. At the same time, the band here experiments with a vaster array of non-metal influences than in any of their previous albums. There are 80s synthpop references surfacing at various places through the LP, more obviously on opening track “Friend or Foe?”. In a few tracks, I also hear neoprog influences - Marillion in particular (“The Place Where I Belong”, “I’m Done With You”), while “Self-Aware” even digresses in reggae territory, if you can believe it.

Dazzling technical playing, a broad set of influences, and lots of proggy adventurousness to placate our nerdiness are definitely among the many strengths that ID.Entity has to offer. However, if I have to be honest, the new record does not come without weaknesses. Two are bothering me particularly. First, the album sounds a bit like its cover image looks: fragmented. There are lots of great moments here and there that do perk my ears, but somehow I can’t seem to find the glue that holds all these little pieces together. Sometimes, it is just a matter of the band cramming too much in too little time: this is especially the case in the shorter tracks where often one does not have even the time to get to know a riff or melody, that Riverside have already moved on to the next one (“Post-Truth”). But things do not always feel smooth even in the longer tracks. The 13-minute “The Place Where I Belong” sounds a lot like 3 separate songs stitched together into one for the sake of it, and it fails to carry momentum from start to finish. I gave quite a lot of thought to what I might be missing, and it seems to me that the new songs do not always manage to create a consistent emotional red thread that can connect the various themes together and ultimately engage and engross the listener. The music does ebb and flow, but the emotional tension remains disappointingly flat for a lot of the album’s duration.

The album’s concept may be partly the culprit here. ID.Entity focuses on social criticism asking important questions about identity and technology in a post-truth world riddled with fake-news that spread on social media like the plague. It’s a controversial and difficult concept, and Duda’s intelligent lyrics make for an interesting and at times thought-provoking read. However, I feel that the concept may have somehow hijacked the creative process here, ultimately stealing the poetry out of it. It is almost as Duda’s need to clearly convey the message took priority over the musicality and poetry of what he is singing. There are moments in the album where his lines simply have too many prosaic words to make for compelling song lyrics or even for decent lines to sing. Snippets such as “Everyone’s divided/extreme right or extreme left/that’s the only choice”, “And this goddamn anger/coming from every corner/I am not surprised/not happy either/because how much can you bear being fucking lied to”, or “You are not my own CEO” should give you an idea of what I mean. I find myself constantly snapping out of the album’s flow and mood because of it, which contributes to my struggle to get emotionally involved with the music.

Ultimately, and it pains me to say this, ID.Entity is a record that was interesting to spin for the purpose of this review, but that I did not feel attracted to return to for more after each spin. There are only a couple of songs that I genuinely enjoy listening to repeatedly: “Friend or Foe?” (perhaps the best track here), “Big Tech Brother” (but I really have to ignore the annoying fake-robot voice at the start of the song) and “Self-Aware” (though the reggaeton part is a tad jarring). This does not mean that ID.Entity is a bad album, and in fact I suspect that if you are not too bothered by its emotional dryness or the lyrics as I am, you may enjoy this quite a bit as the LP contains a lot of strong music and great playing across its 53 minutes. Overall, while I predict that ID.Entity will divide opinions and is not likely to end up at the top of many people’s favorite Riverside LP list, it is certainly yet another high-quality release from the Polish band, and the start of a new chapter that I will eagerly continue to follow.

[Originally written for The Metal Observer]

lukretion Norwegian prog-rockers Motorpsycho are an unstoppable force, churning out nearly one album per year throughout their entire career. Not even the worldwide shutdown of 2020/2021 halted their creative drive, although it did channel it on a slightly different course than anticipated. Unable to tour and not fully enthusiastic about the idea of “live stream shows”, the Norse trio started toying with the idea of a video/audio package that could combine their music, a dance performance by Homan Sharifi and the Impure Dance Company, and cinematography.

That ambitious project is still ongoing, or to put it more accurately, on the backburner according to interviews released by the band. Motorpsycho felt however that it would be a pity not to record and release the music that was envisaged for that larger-scale art performance, which is in fact the material included on Ancient Astronauts. On the vinyl, the four songs that comprise the album are divded between side A (“The Ladder”, “The Flowers of Awareness”, “Mona Lisa / Azrael”) and side B (“Chariots of the Sun - To Phaeton on the Occasion of the Sunrise”), making for a balanced 20 minutes of music on each side. The division also makes a lot of sense stylistically: although all four songs embrace the glorious progressive rock sound of the 1970s, the first three seem to have been influenced by early King Crimson, while the epic “Chariots of the Sun” brings to mind the symphonic mystique of bands like Yes.

While the sound of the LP is closer to retro-prog than the modernist, metallic outbursts of Motropsycho’s more recent records, the Norwegians interpret it with an urgency and vigor that makes it feel fresh and contemporary. “The Ladder” is particularly electrifying, with its driving pace, aggressive vocals and gloriously rock guitars. The song transmits a sense of violent unease that reminded me of the iconic “21st Century Schizoid Man” from King Crimson’s debut. “The Flowers of Awareness” is a short semi-ambient interlude, while “Mona Lisa / Azrael” is another throwback to King Crimson’s debut LP, this time reminding me of “Moonchild”, especially at the beginning and end, while the sudden surge of electric jazz power in the mid-section takes us in a completely different direction.

At 22 minutes of length, “Chariots of the Sun” is the bona fide prog epic of the LP. The surprise, perhaps, is that it is entirely instrumental. Normally, I am not a great fan of instrumental music, but the song’s slow-burning crescendo – from delicate chimes and nimble guitars to full-bodied rock explosions - is captivating and makes for a perfect backdrop to inner traveling and meditations. Here is where the Yes influences strike me as relevant, as I can almost imagine how Jon Anderson’s mystic wordless chanting would perfectly complement the song’s instrumental explorations.

“Chariots of the Sun” is also the song where it becomes most apparent that the music included on Ancient Astronauts was devised as a part of a larger-scale and more ambitious project, as the song literally begs for some cinematic visuals to accompany it. This is perhaps also where Ancient Astronauts reveals its main limitation: while it is always a pleasure to listen to Motorpsycho’s musical musings, there is a sense of incompleteness hovering over this release, almost as if it were missing some essential ingredient to satisfyingly tie the four pieces of music together in a completed whole. Ultimately, this is what weighs the album down somewhat, especially in the larger scheme of the band’s impressive discography, as it is hard not to see it as a parentheses between bigger endeavours.

[Originally written for The Metal Observer]

lukretion UK neo-proggers Arena have been around for nearly three decades now, guided by founding members Clive Nolan (keyboards) and ex-Marillion Mick Pointer (drums). The line-up soon coalesced around the two musicians as well as guitarist John Mitchell, and the trio together wrote and recorded most of the 10 full-length albums that currently form the band’s discography. The line-up on their latest LP, The Theory of Molecular Inheritance, is completed by bassist Kylan Amos (now at his third album with the band) and singer Damian Wilson (ex-Threshold, Headspace, Ayreon), who joins Arena for the first time here.

The curiosity for Damian’s debut was high among fans of the band as well as the broader progressive rock/metal community, who recognizes in Damian Wilson one of the most significant voices in the genre. Unsurprisingly, the singer steals the scene here with a stellar performance that is worthy of all the accolades he has received over the years. Switching with ease between powerful, high-pitch belting and mellow singing, Damian is a perfect fit for Arena’s eclectic sound. The Brits have always balanced their neo-prog roots with a penchant for heavier and more metallic atmospheres, at time even close to the classic Iron Maiden sound. The new album is no exception, as it alternates softer melodic moments with heavier sections, which at times even approach the stylings of modern prog metal acts like Haken (“Twenty-One Grams”). Elsewhere, Arena usher in subtle hard-rock/AOR influences, like on the chorus of “Pure of Heart” or in the gloriously melodic coda of “Life Goes On”. The end result is a satisfyingly varied collection of songs that navigates a vast universe of prog-adjacent styles with taste and class.

Surprisingly given their considerable duration, the 11 songs of this LP are fairly compact and chorus-centric, favouring a streamlined form with repeated verse/chorus sequences rather than more elaborated and extravagant structures. The arrangements tend to vary over the duration of a song, although many tracks share a common template in the alternation between soft, sparsely arranged verses and heavier, fuller choruses. After a while, this approach becomes slightly repetitive, which is why a song like “Field of Sinners”, with its upbeat tempo and weird James Bond movie soundtrack vibes, feels so fresh and welcome. Arguably, more injections of diversity in the songwriting and arrangements would have done good to this record, which at over 60 minutes of length tends to plod ever so slightly as it enters the second half.

Despite these misgivings, I’d lie if I said that I have not been spinning The Theory of Molecular Inheritance madly since I got hold of the CD. With its utterly addictive melodies, this is one of those albums that naturally call for repeated listens, not only as a way to fully appreciate its content, but also for the pure pleasure of listening over and over again to a great set of tunes, performed excellently and sung by a phenomenal frontman.

[Originally written for The Metal Observer]

lukretion British prog metal masters Threshold are back with their 12th studio album Dividing Lines, released on November 18th via Nuclear Blast. This is their second LP after singer Glynn Morgan – who had already appeared on Threshold’s sophomore album Psychedelicatessen in 1994 – made a return to the band’s ranks, replacing Damian Wilson. The rest of the line-up is unchanged compared to the band’s previous record Legends of the Shire. Karl Groom and Richard West lead the charge armed with guitar and keyboards, respectively. As usual, the pair penned much of the material included on the new record, although there are also notable contributions by Morgan, who injected fresh blood into the band’s songwriting department (more on this later). The line-up is completed by Johanne James (drums) and Steve Anderson (bass), forming a time-tested rhythm section for nearly 20 years now.

The band presented Dividing Lines as the “darker, moodier brother” of Legends of the Shire and the description is quite accurate: while Legends was a sprawling, double-disc progressive rock tour-de-force, Dividing Lines marks a return to a heavier and more compact sound that has characterized much of the band’s output in the new millenium. Prog rock aficionados need not worry, though: there is plenty of sophisticated progressive goodness running through the album’s 64 minutes, including distinct references to the 1980s neo-prog sound of bands like Marillion and Arena. This is probably the aspect of Dividing Lines that I found most satisfying: the album is a masterwork of balance as heavy prog metal riffage and aggression are combined with lighter prog rock arrangements and soft, emotional melodies, masterfully interpreted by Morgan’s expressive and resonant voice. The singer also contributed to the songwriting with a handful of tracks that hint towards modern metal influences (the faint growls emerging underneath the cleans in the chorus of “Let It Burn”, the massive vocal hooks in “King of Nothing” and “Run”). These influences also emerge more generally in West’s futuristic keyboard sound, in the crisp, vocal-driven production, and in the streamlined song structures that never stray far away from a simple verse-chorus form.

This was a surprise for me, as I tend to associate Threshold with a more traditionally progressive form of metal, in a similar camp as Ayreon / Star One, Queensrÿche or Fates Warning. To their credit, Threshold pull off this modernist spin majestically – and this comes from someone who is not a big fan of the modern metal fad in the first place. Threshold’s secret weapon lies in the exceptional songwriting and arrangements. Simply put, Dividing Lines contains a handful of songs that can be considered career highlights for the band. “Hall of Echoes”, “Let It Burn”, “Run” and the long-form epic “Defence Condition” offer a mighty testament to Threshold’s extraordinary ability to tread a fine line between complexity, heaviness, technical playing, and melodic accessibility. The hooks are absolutely exhilarating, but the songs also possess strong replay value thanks to the intelligent arrangements and interesting dynamics. I am particularly fond of the depth and subtlety in the arrangements, with keyboards and guitars playing off one another to create an ever-changing, multi-layered sonic background that ensures the music never feels monotonous or repetitive. The playing is also sublime, with strong solos by both Groom and West, plenty of powerful grooves by the rhythmic duo Anderson-James, and a superb performance by Glynn Morgan, who sounds like a man at the highest point in his career.

My only gripe with Dividing Lines is that the songwriting quality drops somewhat halfway through the album. The first four songs are excellent, but things start to fall through with the first long-form epic track included on the LP, “The Domino Effect”: the melodies here feel slightly phoned-in and predictable, which makes the song seem longer than it actually is. The subsequent tracks “Complex” and “King of Nothing” also fail to leave a strong impression. Things start to look up again with “Lost Along the Way”, although its very overt soft neo-prog influences are somewhat at odds with the more metallic nature of the rest of the album. Fortunately, Dividing Lines closes mightily strong with two of its best tracks, “Run” and “Defence Condition”, whose magnificence makes me forget the somewhat pedestrian 25 minutes that preceded them.

Despite the slight mid-flight turbulence, Dividing Lines stands out as one of the best albums by the British progsters, as well as one of the most accomplished melodic prog metal releases of the year. The album may not break any new ground, but when the quality of the songwriting is as high as on some of the tracks included here, it would be foolish to complain. Album after album, Threshold continue to perfect their special blend of melodic power metal and progressive rock, and on Dividing Lines they have found a way of expression that is at times utterly breath-taking. The album is the sound of a band riding a creative peak at the height of their compositional powers: if you are a prog metal fan, you’d be a fool not to ride along.

[Originally written for The Metal Observer]

lukretion How on Earth did I miss out on this amazing band for all these years?! Hailing from Leipzig, Germany, Disillusion play a formidable distillate of all my favourite metal genres, from melodic death metal, to avant-garde / progressive metal, to dark gothic/doom metal. And yet their new record Ayam, released on November 4th via Prophecy Productions, is the first I hear from them - and it simply blew me away! The LP is just the fourth in a career that spans nearly 30 years and includes a long hiatus between 2006 and 2019. That may in part explain why the band has flown under my radar for so long, but still I cannot stop kicking myself for being so late to the party!

This album is incredible. It takes the listener on a sonic journey that knows no boundaries, exploring a kaleidoscope of diverse metal styles and influences with terrific aplomb and intelligence, as each twist and turn of this 60-minute beast feels as natural as water. Opening track “Am Abgrund” is a great example of the extraordinary creative drive that runs through the whole LP. This song throws literally everything at the listener during its exhilarating 11 minutes. A ferocious death metal section with blast beats, lacerating growls and – believe it or not – trumpet and flugelhorn, suddenly resolves in an epic clean chorus, whose vocal harmonies remind me of the way clean voices are arranged by Viking metal bands like Borknagar or Enslaved. The song’s first half is a hurricane, constantly swinging between fury and melody in a way that should be jarring and yet it works splendidly. This rollercoaster of a section eventually culminates in a stunning jazzy guitar solo that gives me strong Cynic vibes. A calmer section ensues, with acoustic guitar arpeggios and soft clean vocals painting the sort of suffused, ghostlike atmospheres one may find in the work of Opeth or Riverside. Another splendid chromatic solo leads back to the death metal pyrotechnics of the opening section, bringing the song full circle.

The rest of the album continues in a similar fashion. Each song brings in new shades of darkness, swinging between annihilating aggression (“Tormento”, “Abide the Storm”), and calmer nocturnal meditations built around dreamy vocals, mournful cellos and acoustic guitars (“Driftwood”, “Nine Days”). This injects a strong unpredictability in the proceedings, as one never knows where the next song may venture. This exhilarating sense that “everything goes” is also achieved by largely eschewing formulaic song structures: each new track takes its own course, loosely arranged around verse and chorus, but free to expand and contract according to the music’s needs. The songwriting is equally fluid, embracing an ever-changing set of influences from song to song. Echoes of gothic metal (Moonspell) emerge in “Nine Days”, but the same song later explores the sort of serene post-rockish soundscapes that one can find in Anathema’s output. Meanwhile, “Longhope” combines catchy dark metal vibes à la Katatonia with a Leprous-esque chorus that is at the same time poppy and brutal. Elsewhere, we find traces of Devin Townsend’s across-the-board take on extreme metal (“Tormento”), but also doomy riffs and tempos (“Abide the Storm”), and even hints of 1970s progressive rock (the Floydian solos in “Abide the Storm”).

It’s a lot to take in, but Disillusion pull it off with ease, making each transition feel natural, almost necessary. Andy Schmidt’s distinctive voice plays a big role in ensuring the album flows without solution of continuity. His subdue, melancholy melodies and cleverly-constructed vocal harmonies are the sonic trademark of the LP: like a beacon in the dark, he guides the listener through the album’s dense and dazzling journey. His vocals are the fixed point around which the music ebbs and flows, always returning to those familiar cadences and melodies. This achieves a beautiful equilibrium between exploration and familiarity, which is one of the major strength of this release.

There is another type of balance that Ayam nails perfectly: that between technical playing and emotional delivery. The progressive metal scene today seems characterized by a chasm between bands that play hyper-technical, but emotionally dry music, and bands that instead embrace the road of “cinematic metal”, rich in emotions but often limited in terms of virtuoso playing. Disillusion sit at the exact intersection between these two traditions, like very few other bands do (Opeth, perhaps, although their music does err on the side of technicality at the expense of emotional punch). Ayam brims with exceptional playing. The guitars (played by Schmidt, Ben Haugg and exiting band member Sebastian Hupfer) pull off excellent riffs and solos, but Martin Schulz’s jaw-dropping performance at the drumkit deserves to be mentioned too: he is a powerhouse, deftly switching between brutal bludgeoning and nimble percussions in the most natural way possible. Throughout the album, however, the focus is firmly retained on effective songwriting and emotional delivery: there is no trace of technical showmanship for the mere sake of it. The result is music that lends itself to two modes of listening – cerebral and visceral –, effectively combining the best of both worlds as far as modern prog metal is concerned.

Among all the praise, there is one aspect of Ayam that bothers me a little: the songs’ sequencing. There are two long-form epic tracks on the album, “Am Abgrund” and “Abide the Storm”, both exceeding 11 minutes in length. Both songs are excellent, but placing them so close to one another (at position #1 and #4, respectively) does not work well. The similarities between the two songs become too salient, reducing their impact (for instance, their structure is similar, with a calmer, moody middle-part bookended by more energetic sections). My other, and bigger, complaint concerns the closing track “The Brook”. This song feels unnecessary to me, because the album’s perfect closing moment has already passed, with the beautiful, languid fade-out of its penultimate song “From the Embers”. In my opinion, those should have been Ayam’s last notes. After such a splendid, uplifting come-down, “The Brook” feels almost like a second, redundant album finale, that lack however the emotional punch of “From the Embers”.

However, in the grander scheme of things. these are mere quibbles. Ayam is a terrific accomplishment that, come December, I am sure will end up on many album-of-the-year lists. There is little doubt in my mind that this is one of the best, richest progressive metal albums released in the past decades, and fans of dark, melancholic metal need to check this out pronto!

[Originally written for The Metal Observer]

lukretion Swedish symphonic metal masters Therion are back with their 18th studio album, which is also the second instalment of their “Leviathan Trilogy” launched last year with the release of the first Leviathan album. Out on October 28th via Nuclear Blast, Leviathan II sticks to the template Christofer Johnsson announced for the trilogy: to give fans a bird-eye overview of Therion’s classic sound in all its different facets, from bombastic and catchy “hits”, to melancholic symphonies, to adventurous excursions in proggy territories. The first Leviathan mainly focused on the hits, while Leviathan II takes on the moodier aspects of the Swedes’ music, using their iconic 1998 album Vovin as a blueprint.

The guitarist did keep to his word and the 11 songs we find on Leviathan II sound indeed as a sort of “best of” of Therion’s most melancholic material from the period between Vovin and Sirius B. The songwriting mostly idles in the mid-tempo range, although there are frequent tempo changes that ensure unpredictable injections of energy, keeping proceedings lively. The mood is solemn and gloomy, an effect underscored by the use of grave and lush choral arrangements that use the full spectrum of voices, from soprano to bass. The vocal melodies are excellent and I love the smooth way that the operatic singing is intertwined with a more straightforward rock/metal style. The alternation between different vocal styles (and singers) throughout the album propels it forward dynamically, escaping the pitfall of unidimensionality that has plagued some previous Therion’s records. The mellower and more introspective nature of Leviathan II also invites a slower unwinding of the music, without rushing for the big chorus hook as it was instead the case for the previous album. As a result, Leviathan II features a better balance between instrumental parts and vocals, compared to the first instalment of the trilogy. There are more spots for guitar and keyboard solos as well as lengthier instrumental passages, with great interplay between chuggy guitar riffs, orchestral scores, and 1970s Hammond and mellotron keyboards.

These qualities make Leviathan II a rather enthralling listen from start to finish. The quality of the material is consistently high and Johnsson wisely injects good variation across the 11 compositions, alternating soft ballads (“Lunar Coloured Fields”, “Hades and Elysium”) with more energetic pieces, in some cases even reviving the use of harsh vocals (“Lucifuge Rofocale”). The middle section of the album may plod a little, with material that feels a tad less inspired (“Hades and Elysium”, “Midnight Star”), but things take a very interesting turn towards the end of the LP. Here Johnsson sneaked in a couple of proggy moments, perhaps as an appetizer for Leviathan Part III, which has been announced to lean into progressive rock territory. This is most apparent on “Cavern Cold as Ice”, which is also my favourite track on the album. It starts with a Jethro Tull-like flute flourish that soon makes space for some beautiful ABBA-infused vocal harmonies and a melody that could feature in a Broadway musical. Things get even weirder as a menacing mid-section slows down the tempo to doom levels of sluggishness before the song explodes in a climactic solo. Quite an adventure indeed! “Pazuzu” is another gem, featuring a tremendous performance by Eclipse’s singer Erik Mårtensson which adds an extra gritty kick to the song, closing the record in style.

For all its positives, Leviathan II (and the trilogy as a whole) puts this reviewer in a difficult conundrum. On this album, like on its predecessor, Therion deliberately take inspiration from their own back catalogue to capture and revive the essence of the “classic Therion sound”, and write new classics with it. In that respect, Leviathan II is a resounding success: the music on this album is really strong, probably the best Therion have recorded in over a decade. However, why should you buy and listen to this record, rather than dust off the shelves your old copy of monumental albums like Vovin or Theli? There’s no easy answer that works for everyone here. Personally, I find that those early albums possess a stronger mystique, and possibly better flow and coherence, too. On the other hand, Leviathan II has better production value (the choirs and orchestrations sound fantastic) as well as more refined songwriting and arrangements that come with the additional two decades of experience that Mr. Johnsson has meanwhile developed. In the end, I can happily live in a world where the Leviathan trilogy coexists with the band’s back catalogue – spinning the latter when I want a more immersive and momentous experience, and the former when I need a quick fix of quintessential Therion sound.

[Originally written for The Metal Observer]

lukretion Denmark-based ensemble Cornerstone wasted no time and, less than two years after their excellent debut Arrival, released their sophomore record Human Stain. The band came together in 1999 as a collaboration between Royal Hunt’s bassist Steen Mogensen and former Rainbow’s singer Dougie White. The rest of the line-up playing on Human Stain is comprised of drummer Allan Sørensen (Narita, Royal Hunt), guitarist Kasper Damgaard, and keyboard player Rune Bring. Long-time Royal Hunt collaborator Kenny Lübcke sings backing vocals, and guitarists Jacob Kjaer (also Royal Hunt!) and Tony Rahm (Prime Time) provide solos in a couple of tracks.

Royal Hunt got mentioned quite a lot in the previous paragraph, but that shouldn’t give you the idea that Human Stain is a sort of Royal Hunt B-sides project. There are of course moments in the music when we are reminded of the symphonic bombast of the Danish maestros, but the album’s overall sound is quite different, and so are the main influences it draws upon. Soundwise, the album is much more guitar-centred than any album Royal Hunt have ever recorded. The bass also sits quite high in the mix and is a prominent driving-force throughout the record. This gives Human Stain a ballsy, no-frill hard rock sound that sets it apart from the lush symphonic productions of Mogensen’s other band.

The most striking difference, however, lies in the influences that Cornerstone take on board on this record, namely Rainbow and Ronnie James Dio. This was also the case on the band’s first LP Arrival, although that album lived in a more unique and special sonic space, mixing classic metal, hard rock and blues. Human Stain shreds off some of those influences and follows more decidedly the classic heavy metal sound of Rainbow. In some instances, the similitude with Ritchie Blackmore’s band is uncanny, also thanks to Dougie White’s voice that is remarkably similar to Ronnie James Dio’s, showcasing that irresistible mix of grit and melody that the American singer mastered so well.

The influence of Rainbow defines the album sonically, but also holds it back when it comes to assessing its overall standing in terms of contribution and originality. There is not much going on in this record that you will not have heard somewhere else before (most likely on a record where Dio was singing). Moreover, despite the generally good quality of the material included here, the comparison with those early Rainbow records remains firmly in favor of the British forerunners: no matter how good songs like “Wounded Land”, “House of Nevermore”, and “Midnight in Tokyo” are, they will never manage to outcompete untouchable classics like “Stargazer”, “Kill the King” or “Rainbow Eyes”.

Ultimately, Human Stain lives and dies by its influences. It’s a thoroughly enjoyable collection of high-quality songs, well arranged and with plenty of catchy melodic hooks that make them memorable. It’s hard to shake off the deja-vu feeling, however. But if you can ignore it, Human Stain is a great record to spin once in a while.

lukretion Tiamat’s seventh full-length album has not a great rep among fans, which is somewhat unjustified in my opinion. The album was released three years after Tiamat’s “commercial” exploit, 1999’s Skeleton Skeletron. The line-up is largely unchanged. The band is still led by singer/guitarist Johan Edlund, with bassist Anders Iwers and drummer Lars Sköld forming a solid, no-frill rhythm section. The only addition to the line-up on the new LP is Thomas Petersson, who plays lead guitar delivering a handful of tasty solos throughout the record. Musically, Judas Christ continues Tiamat’s exploration of “easy-listening” gothic tunes. Edlund’s croony voice takes centre stage, with his catchy vocal lines and witty lyrics layered over simple guitar riffs, melancholic arpeggios, sultry Hammonds and atmospheric keyboards. The album mostly sticks to a pleasant mid-to-low tempo, enough to make you nod your head, but at a speed that is entirely safe for your neck muscles. It’s gothic metal, but soft and melodic, of the kind that you would have expected to hear in a rock club around those years.

The ample concessions to melody are partly the reason why Judas Christ disappointed fans of the band at the time, especially those who were already left unimpressed by Skeleton Skeletron. But there is another aspect of the album that somewhat penalizes the listening process. While Skeleton Skeletron had a very clear and coherent identity from start to finish, Judas Christ is much more heterogeneous, and probably even too diverse across its 12 songs for its own sake. The warning signs come early. While inspecting the album’s backcover, you will notice that the songs are divided into four “chapters”: Spinae (tracks 1 to 4), Tropic of Venus (tracks 5 to 7), Tropic of Capricorn (tracks 8 to 10) and Casadores (tracks 11 and 12). This is not just cosmetics: each group of songs sounds quite different from the others, to the point that one can almost think of Judas Christ as a collection of 4 distinct mini-EPs.

Spinae explores soundscapes at the intersection between gothic metal and melodic doom. The music is solemn, somber and dark. Even the most uptempo songs such as “Vote for Love” retain a deep sense of darkness and melancholy that makes them quite irresistible, frankly. The next chapter, Tropic of Venus, takes the doom and gloom of Spinae and filters it through a haze of 1970s psychedelia. “Fireflower” feels like a love affair between The Beatles and Black Sabbath, while the instrumental “Sumer by Night” screams Pink Floyd. “Love Is as Good as Soma” closes the chapter in great fashion, with a splendid combination of programmed loops, moody keys and dreamy melancholic guitar arpeggios. So far, Judas Christ is a phenomenal listen.

The other two chapters are alas much less interesting, in my opinion. The three songs included under Tropic of Capricorn feel a lot like outtakes from Skeleton Skeletron. They have the same “silly” rock vibe, playing on the combination between easy melodies, disturbing lyrics and gloomy atmospheres. However, while Skeleton Skeletron pulled that off with class, the songs here feel forced and tacky – not unlike Edlund’s side-project Lucyfire that was released one year prior. The album closes with Casadores – a chapter that takes Tiamat’s gloom in acoustic rock territories (“Heaven of High” is folksy, while “Too Far Gone” could have been written in collaboration with Tom Petty). It’s not a totally uninteresting experiment, although both songs fall a bit flat and are too long, ultimately coming across as slightly boring.

The rather dull second half is the sword on which Judas Christ ultimately falls. As the record comes to an end, I am left with a bittersweet taste that is hard to shake off entirely. It’s a pity because the album contains some of my absolute favourite songs in Tiamat’s discography (“The Return of the Son of Nothing”, “Vote for Love”, “Love Is as Good as Soma”). Indeed, the first 7 tracks are all of really high quality and I just kinda wish the album stopped there, rather than dribble along for another 5 lackluster songs until its unceremonious end. Despite these mixed feelings, it’s undeniable that Judas Christ once again confirms that, when it comes to gothic metal/rock, Tiamat are miles ahead of the competition in terms of class, artistry and musicality. So, whatever you think of this genre, Tiamat are among the very best that this particular brand of metal had to offer in the early 2000s.

lukretion Started ten years ago as a side-project by legendary Candlemass bassist Leif Edling, Avatarium have risen to become a reckoning force in the doom metal/rock arena. Album after album, as Edling’s involvement in the band gradually decreased, the Swedes kept carving a unique and remarkable path for themselves, skillfully balancing their doom heritage with swathes of 1970s psychedelic prog as well as jazz and blues influences that are testament to singer Jennie-Ann Smith’s background. This masterplan has finally come to full fruition on the band’s fifth full-length LP, Death, Where Is Your Sting, out on October 21, 2022 via AFM Records. There is no way around it: the new record is not only the band’s strongest effort to date, it is a bona-fide masterpiece and a top contender for my album of the year.

The first thing that I loved about Death, Where Is Your Sting is that it reminded me of the reason why, as a teenager, I became irredeemably attracted to metal: the guitars. Now, keyboards and synths have become a staple of modern metal, but there was a time where these instruments were viewed with hostility in the metal community (I still remember CD stickers proudly promoting the album as “keyboard-free”). Not by me, though: I have always loved the use of electronica and synths in metal, even back in the 1990s when the trend was just starting. However, over the years I have also come to appreciate how (excessive) reliance on keyboards may give guitar players an excuse for lazy songwriting and arrangements, because “the keyboards will take care of texture”. Not here: Marcus Jidell’s six-stringed instrument lies at the very heart of the album’s sound design and texture. One can find all sorts of guitar tones and techniques on this album, making it such an interesting listen through and through. When Jidell is not busy churning out massive riffs with his signature fat, fuzzy distortion, he is bending his strings dramatically or holding long notes to deliver the best Gilmouresque, weeping leads and solos you’ll hear this year. But there’s more: strummed and fingerpicked acoustic guitars are at the very forefront of the music, especially on the album’s first three tracks. In fact, I struggle to recall a recent metal album featuring so much acoustic guitar as this one. And, as if this was not enough, Jidell also takes out his cello in a handful of songs to deliver amazing solos that add a whole new dimension to the album. The acoustic and electric parts are mixed together masterfully, balancing one another and giving the album a multidimensionality and depth that is rare to find in today’s metal productions (more on this later).

Death, Where Is Your Sting deserves multiple spins if only to appreciate the nuance of the guitar parts. But there’s more: the other prominent ingredient in Avatarium’s sonic cauldron is Jennie-Ann Smith’s beautiful voice. Her vocal tone may not grab you immediately: she has a trained, clear and dry voice that one immediately associates with jazz standards and may feel cold and detached at first. But her presence in the music grows with repeated listens, her subdued blues twang becoming more and more spellbinding and her evocative phrasing increasing in power. Eventually, one comes to appreciate Jennie-Ann for a quality many singers do not really have: she truly knows how to use her voice to perfectly fit the music. She can be fragile one moment, and powerful, almost messianic, another, as the song grows in intensity. She effortlessly switches between delicate falsettos and a deeper vocal tone, exploding in forceful screams when the music requires it. It’s a fantastic performance: subtle, nuanced and poetic as no others I have heard this year.

With two such great performers as Smith and Jidell, the album is inevitably constructed around voice and guitars. This is best exemplified in “Psalm for the Living”, a powerful hymn where Smith’s vocals and Jidell’s mournful arpeggios truly constitute the near totality of the music - except for a few bars of sparse percussions provided by drummer Andreas Johansson. Elsewhere, the rest of the band play a more prominent, but still restrained, role. Daniel Karlsson adds tasteful piano flourishes in a handful of songs, while Johansson and Mats Rydström (bass) provide a backbone that is remarkably sparse and understated, often just keeping the beat with very little added embellishments. Jidell’s sound production and Mats Valentin’s mix tastefully place each instrument on different sonic planes - the guitars and voice upfront, then the rhythm section, and finally Karlsson’s keyboards more in the background. This creates a sense of depth and contrast in the mix that stands out compared to many recent metal production - almost like the difference between a 3D and a standard 2D video - and is truly a pleasure to listen to.

The point I tried to make so far is that Death, Where Is Your Sting has a great sound: interesting, rich and deep. But the album’s true trump card is its exquisite songwriting. This is where Avatarium’s superior firepower really comes through. Each of the album’s 8 songs is a gem. The melodies are memorable but never obvious or cheesy. The transitions between verses and choruses are subtle and classy: this is not an album of big, overstated chorus lines being force-fed to the listener over and over again. The progressions feel natural and there are plenty of digressions from the basic verse-chorus structure, which keeps things interesting and not predictable.

The album also offers extraordinary variation across its songs, which makes for a fun and dynamic listen. The first three tracks are more acoustic and explore in depth the band’s 1970s progressive and folk rock influences, from the delay-drenched dark atmospheric rock of “A Love Like Ours” to the almost Johnny Cash vibes of the title-track. The sparse, delicate “Psalm for the Living” serves as an interlude before Avatarium introduce three heavier, doom-inspired pieces. “God Is Silent” is a Sabbathian mammoth that will crush you with its dramatic rises and falls. “Mother Can You Hear Me Now” is a moving ballad featuring one of the best guitar solos I heard in recent years, while “Nocturne” plays beautifully on the contrast between fast, classic heavy metal guitar riffs and 1970s-infused upbeat vocals, a trick Avatarium have proven to master in previous albums as well (Hurricane and Halos). The album closes with the moody instrumental “Transcendent”, a dark, introspective piece swinging dramatically between acoustic moments and heavy sections that almost veer into blackened doom territory (check out Johansson’s double bass drumming in the middle section). It’s a spellbinding conclusion to an awesome journey, exploring themes of death and rebirth through different facets of doom and progressive rock, in a way that feels fresh, genuine and emotionally compelling.

Comparisons are futile because Avatarium sound like no other, but let me nevertheless indulge into an observation. Death, Where Is Your Sting breaks boundaries between genres, exploring darkness through the lens of different musical traditions (doom, classic heavy metal, prog rock, psychedelia, folk) in a way that reminded me of two kindred-spirit artists: Opeth and Oceans of Slumber. Neither band sound anything like Avatarium, but their drive to stretch the boundaries of extreme metal and merge it with other styles into new, extraordinary hybrids, is similar. Echoes of the darker corners of acoustic prog (Comus, String Driven Thing) can be heard both here and in Opeth’s most recent records, not to speak of Mikael Åkerfeldt’s one-off collaboration with Steven Wilson, Storm Corrosion (I bet Åkerfeldt and Wilson would have loved to have written the acoustic arpeggio that opens “Transcendent”). It’s also interesting to compare Avatarium’s Death, Where Is Your Sting with Oceans of Slumber’s Starlight and Ash, also released this year: on these records, both bands took their doom heritage and filtered it through 1960s and 1970s influences to usher in a new, timeless form of darkness. The results that can be heard on the two albums are radically different, but the trajectory towards new sonic landscapes is of a similar nature, and ties in with the recent revival of Occult Rock (Ghost, The Devil's Blood, Dool, Molassess), but with unparalleled class and musicality.

Death, Where Is Your Sting is one of the great albums of our time. It’s the pinnacle of Avatarium’s career to date - combining the experimental drive of Hurricanes and Halos with the velvet finesse of The Fire I Long For to produce a superior brand of dark rock/metal. It showcases a band with a unique voice and in full command of their artistry. This is simply a mandatory listen this year for anyone into the darker side of music.

[Originally written for The Metal Observer]

lukretion Darkness. German quartet Lacrimas Profundere have been dealing in it for nearly three decades now, and with their 13th full-length album How to Shroud Yourself with Night, they have just brought yet another dose of aural despair to their fans. Founded in 1993 by brothers Oliver (guitars) and Christopher Schmid (vocals), the band initially explored the vast expanses of melodic doom/death metal that was gaining traction in those years. Over the next decades, Lacrimas Profundere followed the genre’s evolution, embracing the same gothic influences that bands like Paradise Lost and Anathema were experimenting with at the time, and pushing them to even further extremes, to land eventually in territories not far from The 69 Eyes or HIM. The Germans have recently returned to a heavier sound with their 2019 album Bleeding the Stars, which saw new singer Julian Larre join Oliver Schmid, Dominik Scholz (drums) and Ilker Ersin (bass) in the band. With an unchanged line-up, the new album How to Shroud Yourself with Night continues to explore a heavier brand of gothic metal, mixing together influences from gothic rock, doom, and melodic groove metal/metalcore.

Lacrimas Profundere have never been shy to wear their influences on their sleeves, and the new album is no exception. Tracks like “In a Lengthening Shadow” and “An Invisible Beginning” are almost a tribute to The 69 Eyes and HIM, reproducing in painstaking detail all the tropes of the gothic rock genre, from Julian Larre’s sensual, baritonal crooning to Oliver Schmid’s energetic but melodic guitarwork. Elsewhere, Lacrimas Profundere hark back to the doom metal of their origins, like on “Shroud of Night”, where Larre’s impassioned wails bring to mind Vincent Cavanagh’s (Anathema) performance on albums like The Silent Enigma, or “The Vastness of Infinity” that is graced by a beautiful melodic guitar lead, which again could have been penned by Anathema’s Danny Cavanagh. The groove metal / metalcore influences transpire more vividly in the remaining songs, particularly on “The Curtain of White Silence” and “To Disappear in You”, the latter distinctively bringing to mind modern In Flames.

A paragraph like the one above, full of references to other bands, may give away how I ultimately feel about this album: it is hard not to use the word “derivative” when describing it. However – and this has been true for all the other Lacrimas Profundere’s albums I listened to –, the German band has two enviable, and ultimately redeeming, qualities on their side: tons of class and a knack for writing memorable but never banal melodies. Tunes like “Wall of Gloom”, “A Cloak Woven of Stars”, “Nebula”, or “Shroud of Night” offer irresistible earworms that have drawn me to this album over and over again in the past weeks. Undoubtedly, big credits go to Oliver Schmid’s songwriting. His guitarwork is always entertaining, with plenty of beautiful melodic leads as well as little, snappy riffs that keep the energy running throughout the album’s 10 songs. Julian Larre is also a remarkable talent. He is at ease with a variety of vocal styles, from gothic crooning to harsh growls to higher-register cleans, and he switches repeatedly between these styles in the course of each song. In several occasions, he double-tracks (and sometimes even triple-tracks) his vocal melodies using more than one style, creating a rich and interesting vocal overlay. Most importantly, Larre is one of those singers whose performance is made of more than just notes and rhythm, but also emotions and moods that instantly connect with the listener.

When you have such a talented vocalist in your band, it is hard not to build the songs around them, and this is in fact what happens in How to Shroud Yourself with Night. The song structures are rooted in the standard repetition of verses and choruses, leaving little space for instrumental detours and digressions from the consolidated formula, and putting the spotlight firmly on the singer. Kristian Kohlmannslehner’s production is also instrumental to this, putting Larre’s vocals front and centre in the mix and at a slightly higher volume than the other instruments. The drums are also quite prominent in the mix, in the way they often are in modern metal album productions, contributing to a sound that is slick, full and punchy. Occasionally, however, this comes at the expense of other instruments (the guitars, in particular, are often squished behind the drums-vocals combo). This is a pity because there is quite a lot (perhaps even too much) going on in the background in terms of guitar riffs and leads, as well as keyboard textures, which will get lost on the listener unless one uses headphones to listen to the album (and even then, one really needs to concentrate in order to follow what the various instruments are doing).

Despite these drawbacks, How to Shroud Yourself with Night is a fun, thoroughly entertaining album to sit through. It may not be the most original album you’ll listen to this year, but it contains a handful of killer tunes that are guaranteed to get stuck into your head thanks to very convincing and memorable melodies. While Lacrimas Profundere draw inspiration from a host of different sources, the bandare probably at their best when they combine these different influences into the same song, especially when they let their doom heritage come through in slightly more expansive compositions (“The Vastness of Infinity”, “Shroud of Night”). Further steps in this direction would be very welcome to this writer, who will continue regardless to keep an eye on the German band’s future endeavours, simply because they are one of the classiest and most consistent acts in the contemporary gothic metal/rock scene.

[Originally written for The Metal Observer]

lukretion The second half of the 1990s saw the explosion of the female-fronted symphonic metal genre. Following in the footsteps of bands like The Gathering, Within Temptation, Theatre of Tragedy and Nightwish, dozens of new bands formed and released albums that merged traditional forms of metal, like death/doom or power metal, with symphonic elements and female vocals, often sung in an operatic style. Founded in 1998 by guitarist/keyboard player Lanvall, Austrian band Edenbridge are among the first-movers in the strain of symphonic metal that tends towards the power metal end of the spectrum. However, Edenbridge retain a certain dose of originality that, together with their class and talent, will eventually make them stand out among the myriad of bands that overcrowded this particular subgenre of metal.

Released in 2000, Sunrise in Eden is Edenbridge’s debut record. The album already clearly shows the potential of the Austrian band, albeit this potential is far from being realized on the 9 tracks included here. Edenbridge’s main strength lies in their ambition to merge different styles of heavy metal and hard rock into their sound. Power metal, hard rock, AOR, neoclassical metal, symphonic rock/metal, prog and folk are all influences that surface throughout the album, making for an interesting, varied and fairly original release. The merging of these multiple influences is not completely seamless yet, and the different styles rather emerge in separate songs through the album. This may give the impression that the record lacks somewhat in focus, although I am not too bothered by it.

What bothers me more is that Edenbridge’s chief songwriter Lanvall does not seem to have yet found the right formula to translate his ideas into fully accomplished musical pieces. The main weakness here is the lack of strong melodies that can give the songs a definite identity and make them memorable and interesting. Instead, the album flows away without leaving a strong impression on the listener. Repeated listens do not help much, either. Only a few songs eventually stand out for me: the lengthy, multi-faceted title-track, the softer “Wings of the Wind” and “Midnight at Noon”, with its fun injection of neoclassical power metal.

The latter song, however, also highlights what I think is another problem with this record: there is a disconnect between Lanvall’s music and Sabine Edelsbacher’s vocals. Sabine is an exceptional singer, with a full, richly melodious voice and a great range. Her voice and her poised, trained singing style remind me of musical vocalists, or even vocal pop singers from the 1950s. However, this vocal approach does not work well, for instance, in the context of ballsy power metal pieces, which would instead require a more aggressive vocal style. It also does not help that her voice is pushed very much up to the front of the mix, pretty much as in a musical. The problem is that the musical background is too busy and prominent compared to what you would normally find in musicals – and this leaves the impression that the voice and the other instruments are fighting with one another for space and attention.

This brings me to the other main issue I have with Sunrise in Eden: the production. As a mitigating factor, the budget for the album was low, but even so the album sounds pretty terrible. The guitar sound is particularly bad, not so much on the soloing/leads, but when it comes to the rhythm guitar parts that are tainted by a raw sound that does not suit the music at all. The mixing is also far from optimal. I mentioned the issue with Sabine’s vocals, but the keyboards also sound strange, as they continuously move back and forth in the mix in a distracting way.

Overall, Sunrise in Eden is a bit of a mixed bag. The ideas are there and Edenbridge show considerable potential, especially thanks to the eclectic songwriting style and the band members’ undeniable talent. However, this potential is not yet being fully used and brought to fruition. A lot of the music on this debut album is fairly forgettable and there are only a handful of tracks that really make my ears perk up. Edenbridge will massively improve over the course of the next albums, but for now they are more an unfulfilled promise than an accomplished reality.

lukretion Only one year after releasing their debut album, Austrian symphonic metal band Edenbridge drop their sophomore record Arcana, again via Massacre Records. The line-up is unchanged, safe for the addition of a second guitar player, Andreas Eibler, who is credited for both lead and rhythm guitar on the album, same as Edenbridge’s mastermind and sole songwriter Lanvall. Singer Sabine Edelsbacher is the band’s other driving force, with her powerful yet richly melodious vocals which are among the best you can find in this genre of metal. The line-up is completed by Kurt Bednarsky (bass) and Roland Navratil (drums), who together form a competent if fairly inconspicuous rhythm duo.

Arcana follows closely in the footsteps of its predecessor and successfully rights many of the missteps of that album. The music you’ll find on Arcana strikes a remarkable balance between a flurry of different genres of metal and hard rock. Power metal, melodic hard rock, AOR, symphonic metal, neoclassical metal, hints of folk rock and prog rock – all these styles find a home in the album’s 10 songs, ensuring that Edenbridge’s brand of symphonic metal remains distinct from the two main undercurrents of the genre – its gothic, beauty-and-the-beast strand (Theatre of Tragedy; Tristania) and the power metal strain (Nightwish). Edenbridge sit considerably closer to the latter variety of symphonic metal than the former, but nevertheless retain a considerable degree of originality that places them in a camp of their own and closer to artists like prog rock singer Lana Lane than the aforementioned Nightwish.

There are essentially four types of songs on this record: long, multi-part “progressive” epics; fast, short power metal pieces; more melodic hard rock / AOR mid-tempos; and slow, semi-acoustic ballads. Edenbridge deliver in all these different areas, but Lanvall’s songwriting ambitions probably find their best expression in the longer, more proggy songs (“The Palace”, “Arcana”), where he is allowed to explore the nuances of his musical ideas and let them ebb and flow in the course of a song. “The Palace” is particularly stunning. Everything falls into place here: the vocal melodies are catchy and memorable, but at the same time do not sound dull or tiresome. The interplay between keyboard arrangements and guitar riffs is spot on and the dynamics are great. “Arcana” is slightly more tedious and the nearly 10 minutes of length do not help making it a fully digestible affair, but it remains nevertheless one of the high points of the record.

The shorter tracks are a bit more hit and miss, as they in fact were on the debut album. The hard rock piece “Into the Light” is by far the best among them, with its folk-infused intro and again a strong vocal melody in the chorus. “Color My Sky” veers more into power metal territory with its fast, aggressive riffs, and is also decent, despite the slightly awkward and messy arrangement in its verse where the stomping orchestral interjections are a tad too overpowering. The other songs are far less impactful, mostly due to slightly dull melodies. The sappy ballads are particularly disappointing, as they were on the debut album.

Despite the uneven quality of its tracklist, Arcana represents a definite step forward for Edenbridge, relative to their previous record. The production, while still a bit rough around the edges, is miles ahead compared to the messy affair of Sunrise in Eden (especially the guitar sound). Sabine’s vocal performance is also better. The quality of her voice is unquestionable. However, on Sunrise in Eden she sounded too restrained and “formal” in her delivery, while her voice is more expressive and charismatic on the new album. I also get the impression that Lanvall is slowly learning how to write for Sabine’s voice, which on Arcana feels better integrated with the musical texture of the songs. The balancing of the different styles is also more accomplished here, which is another testament to Lanvall’s improved composing abilities.

Nevertheless. I am still left with the impression that Edenbridge at this stage of their career were very much “work in progress” – with plenty of ideas and talent, but lacking the experience and skills to properly channel them into fully accomplished compositions. Again, the expression “rough around the edges” comes to mind. But the promise is all there – and a song as spellbinding as “The Palace” is a testament to this. If only Edenbridge could write a whole record of songs of that quality, they could easily outcompete the heavyweights of the genre.

lukretion I’ll start this review with a confession: this is the album that I always hoped Oceans of Slumber would make. Don’t get me wrong: I did enjoy the Texan band’s take on the progressive death/doom genre that they have been perfecting over their previous albums. But especially after their 2020’s self-titled LP, I had the strong feeling that the band had reached the limits of what they could do with that sound. It had started to grow stale and did not seem to do full justice to the band’s immense talent, especially to that of their lead singer Cammie Gilbert. Unexpressed potential is probably a way to put it – there was tons of that on their last album. A change was inevitable if Oceans of Slumber wanted to move to the next level. And what a change they delivered with Starlight and Ash!

The new album wipes away most of the tenets that had guided the band’s sound up to this point. Gone are the cavernous death growls. Gone the blistering double-bass runs and most of the other extreme metal aesthetics. Comparing the new LP’s tracklist with that of previous records, you’ll also realize that even the band’s idea of what a song is has radically changed– gone are the long-winding, multi-part 7-minute epics, leaving room for more concise, 4-minute tunes centered around Cammie Gilbert’s extraordinary vocal talent. You get the gist: Oceans of Slumber have taken the road that several other metal bands took before them, moving away from the heavy shores of extreme metal towards softer, more melodic expanses.

To be frank, this much I had expected after listening to Oceans of Slumber’s last LP. That record already contained a handful of more melodic, gothic ballads that were catered to Gilbert’s clean voice. My bet at the time was that the band would continue to dig deeper into this balladry sound, perhaps landing somewhere not far from modern-day Anathema. And here is where I was spectacularly wrong. Because, you see, Starlight and Ash does much more than simply mellowing down the band’s original sound. That’s only part of it. Oceans of Slumber take this softer songwriting approach and let it grow into a whole new aesthetic, which they dubbed “Southern Gothic”.

If you are like me, the term Southern Gothic will tell you little about the actual sonic identity of the album, but it may give you a good idea of the type of vibes it emanates: dark, gloomy, dramatic, but also charged with a deeper spiritual intensity that speaks of trauma and catharsis. Then there is of course the adjective “Southern”, which is testament to the band’s geographical roots and evokes rhythm and blues, gospel, and country music. And here is probably where the biggest surprise of the album lies: those Southern musical traditions are subtly weaved into the songs to form a new, hybrid sound where twangy blues guitars and gospel choirs are juxtaposed to art rock sensibilities, dashes of electronica and, of course, a lingering sense of sluggish heaviness that is inherited straight from the band’s death/doom origins.

This genre bending is done masterfully and ever-so-subtly. The blues and gospel influences are not as in-your-face as, say, in a Zeal & Ardor album, but surface gently from the groovy rhythms and soulful melodies of “The Lighthouse” and “Salvation”, probably the two songs with the strongest Southern accents on the album. These tracks also illustrate another characteristic of the album’s sound that emerges consistently through its 11 songs: drum grooves and vocal melodies take absolutely center stage in Starlight and Ash, to the point that at times they constitute a song’s whole texture. Guitars and keyboards are instead used with restraint, to inject bursts of color into the sound and to shift the songs’ dynamics to dramatic effects (“The Waters Rising”; “Hearts of Stone”; “Red Forest Roads”). Elsewhere, Oceans of Slumber flirt with dreamy art pop (“The Hanging Tree”), while “Star Altar” is the song that most reminds me of the band’s metal heritage – a gorgeous, doomy affair that twists and turns across its different parts before exploding into a spellbinding, down-tuned finale that is bound to trigger some serious headbanging.

These first seven songs are absolutely stunning and showcase the tremendous potential of the band’s newfound style. The flow from song to song is also exceptional: each new track builds on the previous one, but introduces new nuances to the sound, subtly pushing it into a slightly distinct direction to explore a different sonic niche. The magic breaks down somewhat as the album moves to the next set of songs (“The Spring of ‘21”, “Just a Day” and “House of the Rising Sun” - the latter a cover of a 1960s song by UK rhythm-and-blues act The Animals). I cannot quite put my finger on what it is, but these three tracks do not chime in with the rest of the record. Taken separately, there is nothing particularly wrong with each of them. Granted, “The Spring of ‘21” could do with some trimming in its second half, and the mood shifts in “Just a Day” are just a tad too jarring, but this is nothing that one does not get used to after a few listens. My reservation mostly comes from the way these three songs diverge – quite abruptly – from the rest of the album, both sonically and in terms of atmosphere. While the sound progression up to here had been gentle and subtle, suddenly we are confronted with a stark narrative jump, as we plunge into moody piano music (“The Spring of ‘21”, the first part of “Just a Day”) that suddenly turns into the heaviest wall-of-sound bit you will find in the whole album (the second part and the finale of “Just a Day”). Meanwhile, “House of the Rising Sun” veers into chamber rock, with its lush string arrangements and violin solo, marking yet another sudden change of direction in terms of sound. Starlight and Ash eventually returns to the sonic identity of its initial songs with “The Shipbuilder's Son” – a very good song in itself, although it’s somehow too late to restore the continuity and the magic that the first seven tracks were able to create.

Despite my misgivings about the album’s second-half, Starlight and Ash remains a mighty strong record. I have no doubt this is Oceans of Slumber’s best album to date and I am quite sure it will top my album of the year list too. But I am also prepared to go out on a limb and say this record will end up among my favourite 10/15 albums of all times, simply because it excels in absolutely everything that I love in music. It has a sound that innovates without losing sight of the band’s own heritage (both musical and cultural), and, as a consequence, it feels fresh and interesting but at the same familiar. It is exquisitely produced, feeling organic and nuanced, but retaining bite and power when needed. It contains fantastic melodies and arrangements, and superb performances from all musicians involved, especially from Cammie Gilbert – probably the best female singer in metal right now. Most importantly, Starlight and Ash delivers music with soul, capable of connecting with the listener at a profound emotional level, thanks to its themes of trauma and redemption and to its deep musicality and transporting impetus. As I said at the beginning of this review, I have been waiting for Oceans of Slumber to write this album since I first heard their music back in 2016, as I felt the band had the potential to express themselves at a whole new level. Even so, Starlight and Ash vastly surpasses my expectations. If there is only one album you can listen to this year, make sure it is this one.

[Originally written for The Metal Observer]

lukretion Gamma Ray’s 7th full-length caught me by surprise. Knowing the band mostly for their classic mid-90s albums Land of the Free and Somewhere in Time, I was expecting another solid slab of anthemic, if predictable, power/speed metal. No World Order! served me instead with a kaleidoscopic compendium of everything metal, where the sound of classic UK/US bands from the 1980s (Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Manowar) is reinterpreted with gusto by the German band, finding new life as it is filtered through the Gamma Ray musical rulebook. The end result is an exciting voyage through vast metal landscapes, which might feel familiar but are nonetheless exciting.

The references to the classic HM sound are mostly apparent in the record’s mid-section. “The Heart of the Unicorn” and “Solid” are obvious tributes to Judas Priest (with “Solid” even blatantly borrowing the main riff from “Rapid Fire”). “Heaven or Hell” is a battle hymn whose epic overtones will excite more than one Manowar’s fan, while “New World Order” sports a fun, pure hard rock riff that wouldn’t have been out of place on an AC/DC album. The remaining tracks bear stronger resemblance to the German power/speed metal sound that Gamma Ray, together with Helloween, have contributed to immortalize. Even in these songs, however, Kai Hansen and co. do not refrain from laying down a couple of Easter eggs for their fans, like the Maidenesque solos in “Eagle” or the Manowar-tinged ballad “Lake of Tears”.

Remarkably, almost every song feels truly inspired, regardless of the style that the band decides to push to the fore. “Dethrone Tyranny”, “New World Order”, “Damn the Machine” and “Eagle” are particularly exciting, sporting strong riffs, memorable melodies and fun, explosive solos. “Fire Below” is perhaps the only episode that is below average and could be regarded as a filler, while “Solid” may be a bit too close for comfort to the source of its inspiration.

Overall, No World Order! Provides a smooth listening experience that keeps the listener second-guessing which particular artist inspired each song, while at the same time never sounding completely derivative but maintaining a strong Gamma Ray identity throughout. The album’s main strength lies in the way its 11 tracks explore each a different sonic niche. This variation helps balancing the otherwise rigid songwriting that rarely departs from the usual cycle of verse/chorus repetition. It’s a fun album to sit through, one that truly captures the spirit of heavy metal in the same way as the best records from the HM greats once did. And now, this is no mean feat, is it?

lukretion After two albums firmly rooted in the melodic neoclassical metal / hard rock camp, on their third full-length Narnia tried to mix things up a little, injecting a healthy dose of 1980s metal into their sound. As a consequence, Desert Land sounds heavier than the band’s previous two efforts, which were instead highly melodic hard rock affairs. This may or may not have been a reaction to the criticism the band received for the mellowness and lack of grit of their previous two records, or it could have been an attempt to ride the success of European power metal, a genre that enjoyed a significant commercial success at the turn of the century. Either way, it is a welcome turn of events for the band’s sound, which injects some freshness into a subgenre (that of neoclassical metal) that can easily grow stale and formulaic.

In this sense, the album’s most striking aspect, which is also its main strength, is the smooth variation of the songs in its tracklist. Fast, neoclassical tracks that evoke the spirit of Yngwie Malmsteen are alternated with beefier affairs, where the baroque guitar runs and harpsichord accompaniment are substituted with slow, twisty riffs that nod in doomy directions, halfway between Rainbow and Black Sabbath. Meanwhile, “Trapped in This Age” timidly ventures outside the rigid stylistic requirements of the power metal subgenre, with hints of progressive metal in the slightly more complex texture and multi-part structure. “Revolution of Mother Earth” is instead a more standard, piano-driven ballad, which nevertheless pleasantly surprises with its powerful melodies.

For the rest, Desert Land shows the same strengths and weaknesses as Narnia’s previous two albums. Carl Johan Grimmark is a great guitarist, whose playing is not a mere display of technical ability, but is rooted in a stronger idea of melody. Aside from the guitar, the spotlight also shines on Christian Liljegren’s beautiful vocals. He has a trained tenor voice with a rich vibrato that fits perfectly the songs’ majestic and poignant mood. His delivery on Desert Land is perhaps slightly grittier compared to Narnia’s previous records, reflecting the generally more aggressive and metallic style of the new album. The rest of the band is equally proficient, albeit the other instruments are mostly used in an accompanying role, letting Grimmark’s guitar take centre stage, as per the genre’s stylistic requirements. Especially Martin Claesson’s keyboards play a far less prominent role in the arrangements than they had in Narnia’s previous album, Long Live the King. This is a pity since his keyboard parts had been one of the highlights of that record. The emphasis on the guitar makes the arrangements a bit skimpy and predictable, an impression that is reinforced by the album’s limited dynamic range and the fairly formulaic songwriting, trapped in an endless cycle of verse, prechorus and chorus in nearly all songs. However, part of these shortcomings come with the genre and are not specific to Narnia.

Overall, Desert Land is a good album that consolidates Narnia’s position as one of the most solid and proficient acts in the neoclassical metal genre. On this album the Swedes have tried to inject some variation in their usual neoclassical fare, adding more heaviness and aggression to their sound. The experiment is by and large successful, although it does not completely alter the fairly predictable and to a certain degree derivative essence of the band’s musical ideas.

lukretion After Tommy Karevik joined Kamelot in 2012, many feared that Seventh Wonder’s days would be numbered. However, the Swedes showed remarkable resilience and, following a long eight-year gap, came back in 2018 with their fifth full-length, the acclaimed Tiara, with Karevik still behind the mic. This time it took Seventh Wonder only four years to record their new album The Testament, which once again finds the melodic prog metal band with an unchanged line-up and in fine form.

Delving into an intriguing concept about human emotions, the new record takes inspiration from the complex technical musicianship of band like Dream Theater, the instant catchiness of melodic hard rock and AOR, as well as the rhythmic immediacy of modern metal, weaving together this wide range of influences into a distinctive and personal sound that has characterized Seventh Wonder’s discography since the very beginning. Compared to previous albums, the new record packs perhaps more immediate and uplifting tunes, although there is always a dark vein of melancholy running through the music, making this LP a must-listen for fans of brooding modern progressive metal such as Evergrey, Kamelot, and Darkwater.

The album’s main strength lies in the ability to combine contagious melodies with cleverly articulated arrangements, striking a great balance between immediacy and depth. The songs have instant impact on the listener thanks to their formidable hooks, but at the same time it takes several listens to fully unpack their complexity. Take, for instance, the songs’ form. Despite structures that rarely depart from the regular repetition of verse, pre-chorus and chorus, the ever-changing arrangements ensure there is a constant sense of moving forward in the compositions, thus avoiding the chief pitfall of many chorus-centred tunes that often come across as over-simplistic and repetitive. Johan Liefvendahl’s guitar plays a remarkable role in keeping the arrangements fresh and varied, constantly shifting between simple rhythmical accompaniment and more intricate countermelodies. His guitarwork is often doubled up by Andreas Blomqvist’s extraordinary bass lines, which have always been a distinctive aspect of Seventh Wonder’s sound. The songs’ texture is further enhanced by Andreas Söderin’s tasteful keyboard interjections, well-balanced between futuristic and retro sounds, while drummer Stefan Norgren provides a solid backbone to the music, with good grooves that never grow too busy or overbearing. With a singer of the calibre of Tommy Karevik, it’s inevitable that the spotlight is constantly shown on the vocal melodies. And Karevik of course never fails to deliver. Songs like “Warriors”, “I Carry the Blame” and “The Red River” contain great vocal hooks that are guaranteed to remain seared into your mind after the first time you hear them.

These songs, together with the instrumental, vaguely neoclassical metal-sounding “Reflections”, are hands down the record’s best tunes. The album’s second half is instead more subdued and unyielding. “Invincible”, “Mindkiller” and “Under a Clear Blue Sky” thread similar paths as the tracks from the album’s first half, but are dogged by less inspired melodies and, in the case of “Under a Clear Blue Sky”, an overstretched structure that does little beyond adding to the record’s minutage. Even the pleasant ballad “Elegy” that closes the album does not manage to make a very strong last impression, despite the Karevik’s passionate performance.

Alas, the unbalanced tracklist is not the only problem of The Testament. I was also taken aback by the overall lack of variation across its nine songs, which seem to have all been cut from a similar cloth. This is particularly unsettling given that, conceptually, the album set out to explore a diverse range of human emotions, from joy to anger to despair. This diversity does not really come across in the music which instead seems to explore the same mood – halfway between upbeat hopefulness and plaintive yearning – throughout the album’s 53 minutes. The fairly limited dynamic range of many tracks and the strongly chorus-driven song structures add to the feeling of sameness, to the point that one may compare The Testament to one of those mono-ingredient foods that are only digestible if taken in small doses and at the right intervals.

Overall, The Testament leaves me with mixed feelings. It is undoubtedly a high-quality release by one of the best bands in the melodic prog metal genre. It is full of hooks and subtle, technical passages that will appeal to both casual and in-depth listening. It is slickly produced and contains a handful of great tunes that I have been humming to myself countless times in the past week. At the same time, the album does not quite match up with Seventh Wonder’s best output (Mercy Falls, The Great Escape) as it lacks the breadth, vision and variation of those records. It is also heavily front-loaded, with a second half that drags and veers dangerously close to the filler zone. On balance, despite its positive qualities, I doubt that The Testament will stand the test of time as one of Seventh Wonder’s landmark releases, but will instead go down in the history books as a pleasant, but average production by the Swedish combo.

[Originally written for The Metal Observer]

lukretion After receiving encouraging feedback for their debut LP Awakening, guitarist CJ Grimmark and vocalist Christian Liljegren went back to the studio to record Narnia’s sophomore album. This time, however, the duo enlisted a fully-fledged line-up to realize their artistic vision, instead of relying on Grimmark to play all instruments by himself. Joining Grimmark and Liljegren on this album are bassist Jakob Persson, drummer Andreas Johansson and keyboard player Martin Claesson. The new line-up makes a huge difference in shaping Narnia’s music, as it confers a more powerful and well-rounded sound to the band that was missing on the debut album.

Long Live the King is otherwise cut from the same cloth as Awakening, finding inspiration in the neoclassical metal music of Rainbow and Malmsteen’s Rising Force and mixing influences from hard rock, power metal, and baroque music. The album is dominated by majestic mid-tempo songs that exalt Grimmark’s skilled but melodic playing and Liljegren’s trained tenor voice, one of the cleanest and most controlled one can find in this branch of metal. The guitar takes inevitably centre-stage as in much of neoclassical metal music, with lots of excellent hard rock riffs, melodic leads and solos. I particularly appreciate Grimmark’s playing here, as he never loses sight of melody when he constructs his solos and leads, in contrast to other neoclassical guitar heroes (including Malmsteen himself) who often seem to privilege fast and technical playing over anything else. The keyboards also feature prominently on this album to provide texture to the song with a wide range of sounds from harpsichord to organ to sampled choirs. This is a nice difference compared to the debut album, which highlights the importance of having included Martin Claesson in the line-up. The same goes for the inclusion of Persson and Johansson: having a real, flesh-and-blood rhythmic session instead of programmed drums makes a huge difference in the overall album’s sound.

The other main area of improvement compared to the debut record lies in the quality of the melodies. Awakening was a bit hit-and-miss when it came to providing memorable hooks that could transform a good song into a classic. In contrast, Long Live the King contains 3 or 4 tracks (“Living Water”, “Shelter Through the Pain”, the title-track) that are proper masterpieces, and the fact that such songs have been regularly included in the band’s live performances decades after their initial release is testament to that. More generally, it is hard to find weak songs in this album. Each one provides interesting moments, be it a catchy vocal hook, an exciting solo, or just a good riff. In addition to the tracks mentioned earlier, I am particularly fond of “Dangerous Game”, the only fast piece on the album that sounds like a cross between Malmsteen and Royal Hunt, and the closing track “Star Over Bethlehem”, a dark mammothian affair that finds inspiration in the doomy hard rock of Black Sabbath and Dio and provides a perfect conclusion to this epic but overall mellow and melancholic album.

If I were to nit-pick, I’d have to say that the album lacks a bit of variation across its 10 tracks. They all have the same structure (verse/prechorus/chorus/solo), explore similar moods and atmospheres (with the exception perhaps of the more upbeat “Dangerous Game”), and even rely on melodies that are constructed and delivered in a way that is not terribly different from song to song. While on the one hand this ensures that Long Live the King feels very cohesive as an album (something that Awakening was lacking), there is an inherent risk of having the listener lose interest and excitement as the clock ticks on. Fortunately, this risk is by and large avoided thanks to the excellent quality of the songwriting that ensures that things do remain interesting and exciting throughout, despite the nagging sense of sameness one may experience as the album progresses.

Overall, Long Live the King is probably the strongest album released by Narnia throughout their career. It is fuelled by excellent songs with memorable melodies, strong performances and a good production sound. It is the record I reach for whenever I feel in the mood for some Narnia and sits up there with the best albums in the neoclassical metal genre.

lukretion Amidst the European power metal galore of the mid-1990s, Sweden stood out as a fertile land for the neoclassical brand of the genre, inspired by the work of guitar wizard Yngwie Malmsteen with his pyrotechnical mixture of Rainbow-infused hard rock, speed metal and baroque music. Founded in 1996, Narnia are one of the leading purveyors of the Swedish neoclassical metal scene that exploded in those years. The band coalesced around the artistic vision of guitarist CJ Grimmark and vocalist Christian Liljegren. Both musicians had already their own hard rock / metal bands at the time, but were interested in exploring a more bombastic and melodic form of hard rock and heavy metal and started Narnia as a vehicle to fulfil this ambition.

On their debut album Awakening, Liljegren and Grimmark worked as a duo, handling all instruments and vocals themselves, bar a few cameos from a couple of guest musicians. The material for the new album consisted in large part of re-arranged songs from the two musicians’ previous bands (Borderline, Modest Attraction and Sentinel), plus a couple of newly-penned songs. This is why a lot of the tracks on Awakening have a hard rock feel to them, closer to Rainbow and early Malmsteen’s Rising Force than Stratovarius and other power metal acts. The music alternates between epic mid-tempos and faster pieces, and is centred on Grimmark’s technical but melodic guitarwork that provides most of the songs’ texture. Keyboards are used too, but more sparingly. Rhythmically, there is nothing particularly adventurous, as the drums mostly keep a straight tempo with a few fills and flourishes. Unfortunately, it is quite obvious that the drum parts have been programmed as they sound very unnatural and plasticky (especially the cymbals). This is a major let-down because the artificial rhythmic backdrop gives the music a karaoke-like feel that takes away a lot of its power and allure.

This is unfortunate because Liljegren’s and Grimmark’s performances are otherwise excellent. The singer has a trained tenor voice featuring a strong vibrato. He mostly stays in his mid-range and is very controlled in his delivery, which some may find unappealing since it does not conform to the genre’s convention of rough-edged, high-register vocals. I actually find Liljegren’s voice one of the main strengths of the band, since it sets them apart from many other similar acts in the genre and, moreover, it is very pleasant and melodic. Grimmark’s guitar playing is also first-class. He is clearly inspired by guitarists of the calibre of Ritchie Blackmore and especially Malmsteen, to the point of adopting a similar sound too (listen to the acoustic guitar on “Heavenly Love”). And in fact legend narrates that when Grimmark and Malmsteen met, upon hearing Narnia’s early material, the guitar maestro commented: “That sounded quite a bit like me”.

Awakening’s tracklist is pretty solid, with almost no fillers or subpar songs (“Touch from You” being perhaps the weakest of the lot here). However, the album also lacks particularly strong episodes that remain seared in one’s ears and mind. The melodies are good, but not super catchy. Moreover, it is hard not to perceive a certain artificiality and formulaicity in the songwriting and delivery, which is partly due to the programmed drums as mentioned earlier, and partly to the rather cold production sound. Another downside is that the album lacks somewhat cohesion, alternating between downcast mid-tempos, love ballads, and gutsy hard rock numbers, in a tourbillion of styles that are not meshed well together. This probably reflects the album’s genesis as a collection of other bands’ re-arranged songs and makes for a slightly disjoint listening experience overall.

Despite these limitations, Awakening is a good debut album from a clearly talented and promising band. Liljegren and Grimmark will continue with much stronger albums, but Awakening is a decent enough starting point to deserve a recommendation not just for Narnia’s fans and collectors, but for fans of neoclassical metal and hard rock, more generally.

lukretion After two LPs recorded with different guest musicians, Swedish guitarist Thomas Wolf decided to gather a proper, stable line-up for his neoclassical metal project Stormwind. Joining Wolf on th band’s third full-length, Heaven Can Wait, are singer Thomas Vikström (ex-Candlemass), keyboard player Kaspar Dahlqvist (Treasure Land) and drummer Patrick Johansson (who will shortly afterwards join Yngwie Malmsteen’s band). All three newcomers are first-class musicians, who definitely elevate Wolf’s project to a whole new level compared to the previous instalments of the band. This allowed Wolf to write songs that are more aggressive and technical than the ones he had written for his previous two records, straying away from the melodic neoclassical hard rock sound of those albums and towards a neoclassical power metal style similar to that pursued by Malmsteen around the same time.

With such strong premises, the expectations for Heaven Can Wait are understandably high. Unfortunately, the album falls short in multiple ways. There are two main shortcomings. First, I have the impression that on this record Wolf had not yet found the right songwriting formula to fully exploit the talents of his new line-up. By penning fast, aggressive pieces he may have tried to play to the strengths of Johansson’s ultra-technical drumming, Vikström’s powerful voice, and Dahlqvist’s fluid soloing abilities (in addition to Wolf’s own technical prowess). But, in doing so, he forgot one essential ingredient of neoclassical metal music: strong melodies. There are very few songs, or parts of songs, that are memorable and catchy here. Most of the album flows away anonymously amidst keyboard/guitar solo duels, tons of baroque-sounding riffs and leads, and a lot of other musical tricks that tick all the right boxes of the neoclassical metal style (alternation between mid-tempo pieces and faster songs; tempo halving/doubling between verse and chorus; relentless double-bass drumming), while failing to leave any lasting impression. I also think that Wolf did not yet know how to write for Vikström’s voice. The singer has an expressive tenor voice, with a good range and lots of character. Many of the parts for his voice here force him to use his upper register in a way that comes across as strained, inevitably sacrificing expressivity and character.

But what really kills this album, in my opinion, is the abysmal production. Stormwind have a history of badly produced albums (hint to all guitar heroes out there: it is OK to leave the control knobs to external producers, once in a while, if you are not up to scratch), but I think Heaven Can Wait beats them all hands down. The sound quality of this album is truly demo-like. The instruments do not blend with each other at all, either because they sound very separated in the mix or because they are piled senselessly on top of one another. The voice is way too upfront in the mix, in a way that highlights all the little imperfections in Vikström’s singing. The drums are also too loud and often drown out a lot of the other instruments. Sometimes this is actually a blessing, because Wolf’s rhythm guitar sound is terrible: muddy and raw, this is definitely not what is needed to do justice to his polished, ornate riffing. This reckless production job makes listening to this album a rather painful experience.

Overall, Heaven Can Wait is a disappointing affair. Stormwind’s previous LP Stargate was impressive, not least thanks to the use of a highly skilled female vocalist as lead singer, which is rather unusual for this style of metal. On Heaven Can Wait, Thomas Wolf put together a whole new line-up consisting of top Swedish musicians and went for a more traditional take on the neoclassical genre. The move did not pay off here: Stormwind lost something in terms of originality while at the same time did not realize huge gains in terms of improved performance or songwriting. On the contrary, the songs Wolf wrote for Heaven Can Wait are not nearly as impressive as the first 5/6 tracks that had appeared on Stargate. Add the fact that the new album sounds terrible, and it is hard to recommend Heaven Can Wait to anyone beyond the strictest circle of Stormwind’s hardcore fans and collectors.

lukretion In the 90s Sweden was a fertile land for neoclassical metal, the metal subgenre based on a combination of hard rock, speed metal and baroque music popularized by Swedish guitar wizard Yngwie Malmsteen, who himself found inspiration in the songwriting of Ritchie Blackmore and his brainchild Rainbow. Guided by guitarist Thomas Wolf, Stormwind follow in the footsteps of the aforementioned six-string heroes. At the time of their second LP Stargate, the band was by and large a Thomas Wolf’s solo project, which is also reflected in their moniker (“Thomas Wolf’s Stormwind”). The guitarist is here aided by a score of different musicians, including Europe’s drummer Ian Haugland, keyboardist Per Hallman and bass player Kristofer Eng (who will later both play in prog rock outfit Brighteye Brison), and singer Angelica Häggström.

The presence of a female vocalist is probably the main element of novelty and interest in this album, since this is an unusual choice for neoclassical metal bands. The music on Stargate is otherwise a competent but fairly ordinary take on Rainbow’s hard rock / melodic metal style, with generous helpings of virtuoso’s showmanship that would have made Malmsteen proud. The guitar takes of course centre stage in the album’s twelve songs, where Wolf showcases a barrage of techniques, from standard hard rock riffs, to power chords, to leads inspired by typical baroque runs, to two-part guitar harmonies, and plenty of technical solos too. The keyboards mostly feature in a supplementary role, playing chords to add to the songs’ texture, and, in a couple of occasions, engaging in “solo duels” with Wolf’s guitars. Rhythmically, things are not particularly adventurous as per the genre’s standard. The drums mostly keep a straight rock tempo that does not vary much in the course of a song. Kristofer Eng’s bass playing is instead bolder, with lots of small solos and grooves that do not fail to capture the ear. The songs alternate between epic and majestic mid-tempos and faster, more aggressive numbers, in classic Rainbow/Malmsteen’s style, with a lean and focused songwriting that is centred on the repetition of verse/chorus plus the obligatory solo intermezzos.

What distinguishes Stargate from most other albums in this style is Angelica Häggström’s performance. Her voice is a cross between Ronnie James Dio and Janis Joplin, if you can imagine how that may sound. She packs a nice vibrato, tons of husky character, and power too. She can rip and roar in the most aggressive songs (“Hit by the Sun”; “Aliens”), but she also shows plenty of shades and emotions in the more mid-tempo pieces (“Masquerade of Love”; “Stargate”). She also has good melodies to sing, especially in songs like “Masquerade of Love”, “Time Won’t Tell” and “Stargate”, which are possibly the best tracks of the record.

Unfortunately, the interesting songs are all placed in the album’s first half, while the second half is considerably weaker and lacks cohesion too, due to a couple of tracks that do not seem to fit with the rest of the material (the bluesy “Cry for Your Love”, the strange AOR/metal hybrid “Beyond Lies”). This detracts somewhat from the listening experience since after the title-track I almost invariably skip most of the remaining songs, with the exception of the good instrumental “Miramar” that closes the album. The other major weakness of Stargate is the subpar production. The sound is muddy and muffled, and there is something seriously wrong with the mastering as there are several instances of audio clipping especially when the bassist starts slapping/soloing. The levels in the mix are also far from optimal, with the guitar sometimes pushed too far back and the drum/bass combo too upfront.

Overall, Stargate is an interesting, if imperfect, record that fans of neoclassical metal should pay attention to. In a sea of music releases that often sound all too samey, Stargate stands out thanks to some inspired songwriting and the presence of an exceptional female vocalist, which is highly unusual for the genre. A weaker second half and a messy production spoil somewhat the album’s enjoyment, but not so badly to completely undermine the record, which is in fact one of the best releases from this Swedish combo.

lukretion French prog metallers Spheric Universe Experience (S.U.E.) have been around for a long while now. Guitarist Vince Benaim put together the band back in 1999 and their first official release dates back to 2003. After their 2005 well-received debut full-length Mental Torments, S.U.E. started gradually distancing themselves from the Dream Theater / Symphony X’s brand of prog metal that they had pursued at the beginning of their career, veering towards a more commercial form of groove / alternative metal. Their fifth LP Back Home is a literal return to the roots, as the band embrace again with full power their progressive metal influences.

While the new album falls squarely into the classic prog metal genre, S.U.E. have retained some subtle elements of their foray into alt / groove metal territory. The guitars are chunky and sometimes have a djenty feel to it that one immediately associates with the modern progressive metal sound of bands like Haken. Singer Franck Garcia has the classic high tenor voice that is characteristic of the genre, but there is a modern flavor to some of his melodic lines that brings to mind bands like VOLA or Voyager. Meanwhile, keyboard player Fred Colombo alternates classic orchestral flourishes with futuristic sounds that are well suited for the sci-fi concept that runs through the LP. This mixture between the old classic prog metal sound and a more modern and alternative take on the genre is the element that distinguishes this record from many similar others.

Fear not, however, Back Home delivers all the progressive goodness that you would expect to find on a classic Symphony X or Dream Theater’s album. There is plenty of muscular, complex riffs that however never lose sight of melody. While the music is strongly guitar-driven the keyboards play an important and prominent harmonic role too. The rhythmic section (comprised of new members Romain Goulon / drums and Julien Negro / bass) is boisterous, with plenty of drum fills and bass solos. The vocals are forceful but melodic. The melodies are not overly catchy, however, and it takes a while before they sink in. This and the complex song structures imply that Back Home is not easy-listening material and it requires a considerable investment in terms of time and attention on the part of the listener before it can be fully appreciated.

A further challenge comes from the fact that S.U.E. have followed a sort of pedal-to-metal approach when they wrote the nearly 70 minutes of music for this album. There is hardly any moment of respite as one goes through the record’s 13 tracks: it’s a sonic assault through and through, with constant fast tempos, hard-hitting riffs, and relentless drumming. There are some drops in tempo and intensity here and there, but not enough to let the listener properly catch a breath. Inevitably, listening fatigue sets in pretty quickly and by the time I reached track 9 “The Absolution pt 1”, which is the first proper break in the album’s flow, I was a spent force.

However, this is mostly me not being overly enthusiastic about this particular brand of prog metal where “more is more” all the time. But I know there is a market for it – hell, there has been one for over 30 years! –, and S.U.E. undeniably give other bands that cater to it, even the most prominent ones named earlier, a run for their money.

lukretion For his fourth solo album – the first in nearly a decade – Dream Theater’s singer James LaBrie has mixed things up considerably, starting with the musicians he has brought in to collaborate with him on the new record. Keyboard player Matt Guillory, who had been LaBrie’s wingman of choice for his previous solo outings, does not feature on Beautiful Shade of Grey, and neither do Ray Riendeau (bass) and Peter Wildoer (drums), who had both played on the singer’s previous two records. The new album has instead been written together with Eden’s Curse bassist Paul Logue who here also plays acoustic rhythm guitar. Logue then recruited his fellow bandmate Christian Pulkkinen to play keyboards, while LaBrie’s son, Chance, was recruited behind the kit. Lead guitarist Marco Sfogli (PFM) is thus the only musician on the new album who had also played with LaBrie on previous records.

The lineup changes are mirrored by a significant departure from the sound LaBrie had explored on previous records. In fact, Beautiful Shade of Grey is as far removed from metal as anything that LaBrie has sung on before. The album’s 10 tracks explore instead a musical space at the intersection between progressive rock and acoustic hard rock, visiting places that have more affinity with bands like Spock’s Beard, their melodic rock offshoot Pattern-Seeking Animals, or Troika (Neal Morse’s recent collaboration with Nick D’Virgilio and Ross Jennings), than Dream Theater or other prog metal acts. The songs are predominantly acoustic, even when they build up to a full-band approach. Acoustic guitars, piano, and Hammond organ provide the songs’ harmonic texture, which Chance LaBrie’s restrained drumming is careful not to overpower. Meanwhile, Marco Sfogli interjects some technical but exquisitely melodic solos, frequently using the acoustic guitar too.

This rich but delicate musical tapestry offers a perfect background for James LaBrie to explore the entirety of his vocal range and skills, in a way that he is often unable to do with his main band. On “Give and Take” the singer reaches the lowest notes in his range, and the contrast with the high notes he hits for instance on “SuperNova Girl” testifies to his impressive range. Elsewhere, LaBrie has a chance to show how expressive his voice can be when he does not have to sing melodies over speed-of-light metal anthems (“Sunset Ruin”, “Am I Right”). Meanwhile, the gorgeous multiple voice harmony at the beginning of “Conscience Calling” provides an insight into what some of the singer’s influences on this album may have been (Journey, Foreigner).

Beautiful Shade of Grey flows away very pleasantly, although it does lean a bit too heavily on mellow balladry. It’s a pity because when LaBrie experiments with the use of acoustic instruments in a more hard rock / uptempo context, things get really interesting, like on the two acoustic rockers “Devil in Drag” and “Hit Me like a Brick”. The slow tunes are of course great too, although only some truly hit the mark (the heartrending “Sunset Ruin”, dedicated to LaBrie’s late brother; “Am I Right”, where we also find a cameo by Theresa Thomason, whom Dream Theater’s fans may remember from her duets with LaBrie on “The Spirit Carries On”), while others fall somewhat flat, suffering from weaker melodic ideas (“SuperNova Girl”, “Wildflower”). I am also slightly puzzled by the way LaBrie chose to close the album, with a Led Zeppelin’s cover (“Ramble On”) and an “electric” version of the LP’s opening track, “Devil in Drag”. While it may be mildly entertaining to hear LaBrie do his best Plant’s impersonation, both songs feel largely unnecessary, and spoil somewhat the record’s flow.

Nevertheless, Beautiful Shade of Grey remains a thoroughly enjoyable record that shows a side of LaBrie that we do get to see often with his main band. Dream Theater’s fans (and metalheads in general) may not be overly impressed by the LP, because there are essentially zero traces of metal here. The album may instead appeal more to fans of 1970s hard rock / prog rock, who may be surprised to find in LaBrie a new, versatile voice for their favourite genre.

lukretion A brainchild of guitarist Markus Sigfridsson (Darkwater; Harmony), All Things Fallen are releasing their second LP Shadow Way on June 3rd via their own label Blackoak Records. The band’s line-up is completed by Pain of Salvation’s drummer Léo Margarit, bassist Raphael Dafras (Edu Falaschi; Harmony) and singer Erik Tordsson (End of September). As you might have guessed already from the names in the line-up, All Things Fallen play a dark, melodic brand of progressive/power metal, not terribly different from Markus Sigfridsson’s main band Darkwater. Other useful signposts are bands like Evergrey, Kamelot and Pain of Salvation.

Melancholia and melody are undoubtedly the keywords here. But there is a lot of gutsy power too across the album’s 9 songs. This is probably one of the defining characteristics of Shadow Way that helps to elevate it above many other records dabbling in similar moods and sound. Guitarist Markus Sigfridsson does not hold back and uses a barrage of powerful, engaging riffs and leads that dominate the album’s sound. There’s some really interesting guitarwork on display here, intricate and inventive, yet very melodic, reminding me of bands like Conception and Ark. It’s a throwback to the early 2000s, when progressive/power metal was built around wonderful guitar acrobatics and a thankfully far cry from the contemporary rendition of the genre, where the spotlight is almost exclusively on cheesy vocal melodies and guitars most of the time chug away lazily in the background.

This is not to say that Shadow Way lacks in the vocal department. To the contrary, singer Erik Tordsson puts in an excellent performance, exploiting his considerable vocal range that allows him to reach the lows of the best Roy Khan as well as the highs of James LaBrie. His singing is not all technical bravura, though. It conveys plenty of emotional subtlety too, which gives depth and life to the songs. Experienced drummer Léo Margarit and bassist Raphael Dafras provide a powerful but refined rhythmic section, of which I appreciated the ability to hold back when the songs needed it, avoiding to fill the sound with walls of double-bass and incessant fills like many other bands in the genre sometimes do. The album also sports some interesting arrangements involving keyboards (played by Markus Sigfridsson) and violins on “Pandemonium” and “Path of Dismay” (played by guest musician Maria Grigoryeva).

Shadow Way starts mightily strong: its first 4/5 tracks are absolutely stunning. The two singles “The Sentinel” and “Pandemonium” are particularly engaging, the latter thanks to a catchy, singalong chorus that will be hard to put out of your mind. Unfortunately, there’s a noticeable dip in songwriting quality as we move to the album’s second half. Songs like “Narcissistic Ritual”, “Kiss of Death” and “Desert of the Real” sound a tad too generic and feel melodically uninspired. Most importantly, they lack the freshness and variety that one can find on the record’s first-half, making the later section of the album somewhat of a drag to go through.

Despite this unevenness across its two halves, Shadow Way remains a thoroughly enjoyable record to listen through. It may not be an album that pushes any significant musical boundaries, but it offers a well-played, well-produced slab of solid prog/power metal that is rare to find these days.

[Originally written for The Metal Observer]

lukretion Released in 2003 to launch Tiamat’s new full-length album Prey, Cain is a single containing three songs. Two are taken from the forthcoming LP (“Cain” and “Love in Chains”). The version of “Cain” included here is actually radio-edited and is about 90 seconds shorter than the version that will appear on the full-length (you can easily spot where it was cut as soon as you hear the horrible fade out that obliterates away Thomas Petersson’s solo at the end of the track). The third song on the disc is a cover of WASP’s “Sleeping (In the Fire)” that you can also find on some reissues of Prey. I have mainly two criteria to evaluate singles: 1) whether the record gets me excited about the full-length album, and 2) whether it contains any interesting non-album material that is not readily available elsewhere. Cain does not disappoint in either dimension, but it also does not get full marks.

Not having yet listened to Prey, the two album tracks got me moderately intrigued about it. Tiamat seem to have taken a darker course on this one. “Cain” is at the intersection between doom and gothic metal. Its verse is built around a particularly foreboding melody, that is only partially resolved in a brighter and catchier chorus. All in all, this is a good song that is catchy without being cheesy, and explores an interesting, dark mood. I cannot say the same about the other track taken from Prey, “Love in Chains”, where Tiamat took a page from the book of The 69 Eyes to write a fairly plain and run-of-the-mill goth rock number that chugs away without leaving any lasting impression on me. I actually like the Finnish band, but it is disappointing to see Tiamat, who have been among the forerunners of the gothic metal scene, lose their unique sound to churn out vanilla goth rock tunes instead.

Coming to the “non-album” track, I am not overly excited about it, either. Don’t get me wrong, I love WASP’s version of this song. It’s an awesome power ballad that Blackie Lawless literally rips apart with his incredibly emotive vocal performance. And that’s where the problem lies for Tiamat’s cover version. Edlund’s sedate voice simply cannot provide the emotional oomph that this simple song would need to leave its mark. He simply sucks the life out of the song, which makes for an interesting, but emotionally sterile listening experience.

Overall, Cain leaves me with a mixture of curiosity and apprehension about the full-length album the single is supposed to advertise. I am not sure that is a good thing. Would I buy Prey, based on these songs alone? Probably, but that’s because I am already a Tiamat fan. If I hadn’t already been into the band, I am less sure that this single would convince me to check them out. And that cannot possibly be a good thing.