Label: Frontiers Music Srl.
Release date: March 6, 2020
Production: Magnus Karlsson
Album length: 56.05 min
Genre: Melodic Rock / Heavy Metal
Rating: 8.5 / 10
The Lord works in mysterious ways. But the Italian label Frontiers Music Srl. clearly isn’t giving up. Anyone remember the days of the Allen-Lande project and its four albums? The last one, “The Great Divide”, came out six years ago. Back when this project’s debut, “The Battle”, dropped in 2005, it sounded incredibly fresh and different. Until that day, you’d rarely heard anything like it, if at all: a brilliant blend of the musical infectiousness that metal songwriting can deliver. A mix of ultra-bombastic symphonic grandeur, two dominant melodic vocalists, and, right alongside the pronounced orchestral arrangements, guitars that were every bit as swaggering, spiced up with adventurous, top-notch soloing.
Now, Jorn Lande figured it was a one-off thing, but he stuck with it anyway through the fourth album, “The Great Divide”, then lost all interest and bowed out, saying there were already quite a few similar projects on the scene by then and that it just couldn’t excite him or “move him forward” musically anymore. Russell Allen, the famous lead voice of American progressive metal heavyweights Symphony X, doesn’t see it that way. And since the project had grown over the years into a big hit with fans of this style, Frontiers Records managed to get back in touch with the Swedish musical wizard and “multi-task” workhorse Magnus Karlsson, to take on the songwriting, arranging, and production for the next chapter of this story. It also became clear that Allen needed an equal but opposite vocal counterpart. The idea of bringing in a female voice turned out to be spot-on, and for the upcoming album, former Nightwish singer Anette Olzon took the job.
So it makes sense to bury the old project and welcome the birth of a new one, whose studio debut is “Worlds Apart”. If you know Magnus Karlsson’s work (and there’s a hell of a lot of it), nothing on “Worlds Apart” will surprise you. And it’s incredible how the guy’s creative inspiration never runs dry: while writing this album he was also making his new Free Fall record (release announced for June 2020) and working on the new Primal Fear album, which comes out this July.
For all the expected style and production, “Worlds Apart” brings a surprising freshness. Magnus has rarely arranged vocal lines for a female voice, and maybe that’s exactly why “Worlds Apart” is more interesting and exciting than you’d expect. It’s a surprise, because quality-wise it’s armed to the teeth anyway. But the experience is there (the Kiske/Someweville project), and Magnus did the job once again with total perfectionist brilliance and incredible inspiration. Compared to the first three Allen-Lande albums, this one is more lavish symphonically and more heavily stacked with orchestral arrangements, and you can hear it in the sound, though the guitar phrases are still concrete and “loud” everywhere, as they should be. Russell goes for a clean approach, the kind he dropped in Symphony X back in 2000, when he last sang that way on “V: The New Mithology Suite”. On the album, he and Anette complement each other vocally in a phenomenal way and “talk” to each other through insanely catchy duets, all of which build to an atmospheric crescendo in pompous choruses. They keep stealing the spotlight from each other, and it’s hard to pick favorites or the best moments of the album. The closer, Who’s Gonna Stop Me Now, opens with a phrase decked out in triplet harmonies that Primal Fear could just as well have used.
Anyone who knows the four Allen-Lande albums has to check out “Worlds Apart”, because it’ll fit you like a glove. All it takes is being a fan of Magnus Karlsson’s musical approach and his way with arrangements, because on this album too you’ll find “scattered bits” of his creative journey through the years, from when he wrote music for projects like Place Venodme, Last Tribe, and Midnight Sun, or for artists like Bob Catley (Magnum) and Tony O’Horra (Sweet, Praying Mantis), all the way up to more recent ventures like The Ferrymen.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Track list:
01. Never Die
02. Worlds Apart
03. I’ll Never Leave You
04. What If I Live
05. Lost Soul
06. No Sign Of Life
07. One More Chance
08. My Enemy
09. Who You Really Are
10. Cold Inside
11. Who’s Gonna Stop Me Now
Studio musicians:
Russell Allen – vocals
Anette Olzon – vocals
Magnus Karlsson – guitar, keyboards, bass
Anders Köllerfors – drums
