Released: January 24, 2025 on Frontiers Records
Production: Olaf Thörsen
Length: 57:46
Genre: Prog Power Metal
“SI VIS PACEM PARA BELLUM”
Back in 1999, Labÿrinth were the next big thing in power metal. The year before, the Italian crew had dropped the masterpiece Return to Heaven Denied, which without a doubt sits among the ten best power metal albums in history. Then the EP Timeless Crime hit the shelves, and its lead single, the supersonic Save Me, cranked up the heat ahead of the announced album Sons of Thunder.
And then the trouble started. Vocalist Rob Tyrant (now Roberto Tiranti) was in the band one minute, chasing a solo career the next, and the minute after that he was busy with Eurobeat (!) side projects. Guitarist Olaf Thörsen suddenly wasn’t happy with the mix and production of the already recorded album and decided to fix it all by himself, his way. The remixing took him a good year, and the guys blew the momentum they’d built with the previous record. By the time Sons of Thunder landed in stores and on streaming players, its totally flimsy sound turned off most of the fans. And let’s be honest, the songs themselves didn’t live up to the standards of the brilliant predecessor either. As Zmelkoow would say, “when a good chance comes along you blink, and once it’s gone by you run after it and try to catch it”
After that disappointment, Olaf left the band and founded Vision Divine, while the others did their best to carry on with a slightly changed sound (they moved way into progressive territory) and kept the status quo going with three albums.
Olaf came back to the band, repentant, in 2010, and together they recorded Return to Heaven Denied Pt. II – “A Midnight Autumn’s Dream”, a fairly successful sequel to the classic mentioned above. It was the last album with the big four of members all together, because in 2016 founding member and keyboardist Andrea De Paoli (once Andrew McPauls) left the band and was replaced by Oleg Smirnoff. The fourth member of that foursome is the band’s hidden boss, guitarist Andrea Cantarelli (once Anders Rain).
In between came two more top-quality prog power releases, and this year a new album greeted us with the melancholic, dark title In the Vanishing Echoes of Goodbye.
The promo single Welcome Twilight whetted the appetite, and with its heavy riffs, tons of double bass drum and stratospheric Roberto vocals, it raised expectations for the new album sky-high.
As always, the album is held together by Andrea, Olaf and Roberto. The first two bring probably the most “busy” guitar phrases, melodies and interludes on the entire power metal scene, with Olaf handling the neoclassical shred and Andrea the finely tuned melodic creations. And Roberto rules with his commanding vocals, pushing sonic barriers with flawless technique and effortlessly hopping from dark verses to sunny, super melodic choruses. His tone and typically (Italian) vocal phrasing can be a stumbling block for plenty of people, but unlike the band’s previous singer, the famous Fabio Lione, Roberto pulls it off with a ton of charm. The absence of the other Andrea on keyboards doesn’t show, since Oleg shows off his mastery with his soundscapes and neoclassical passages and fills out the sound nicely. Another in a long line of drumming “wonder boys” (Rolf from Stratovarius and Eloy, formerly of Sepultura and now Slipknot, come to mind), Matt Peruzzi chews through nonstop seas of double bass barrages, romantic percussion and broken rhythms, and he’s a major part of the overall sound. Sadly, Nik Mazzucconi‘s bass merely exists.
It looks like Olaf learned a thing or two from the Sons of Thunder sonic disaster, because the album’s sound is prog power perfection. It pushes the guitars to the front, of course, but not just in the solos and melodic passages, also in the surprisingly hard-hitting rhythm patterns. The songs sound tight but not overly compressed, and you can really call this a proper metal sound.
The opening duo, Welcome Twilight and Accept the Changes, hits with a crushing force that doesn’t let up for the entire length of the album. Here and there it’s interrupted by gentle, melancholic passages, like at the start of The Healing and in the ballad To the Son I Never Had (with an absolutely fantastic, emotional multi-voice chorus).
Song lengths range from four and a half to seven and a half minutes, which is textbook prog power. There’s not a moment of monotony or boredom anywhere. If the guitars ever take a breather, Oleg steps in with intricate melodic patterns, and Roberto has no time to rest, from gentle vibratos and mysterious whispers to ear-piercing highs, there’s plenty of everything. And in the background (or the foreground, depending on how you look at it), the rhythm section is sweating buckets.
The whole album keeps an extremely high level of quality and surprises the listener with a new detail on every spin. I don’t really have favorites, but if I have to, I’ll name the super-energetic opener Welcome Twilight, which opens the gates of hell with its doomsday gang choruses, and the gentle To the Son I Never Had. But only because I have to. As is customary on high-quality prog power albums, it all wraps up with the half-progressive treat Inhuman Race.
Personally, this is the best album since Olaf’s return, and I really can’t find a single flaw. The magic and enchantment of Return to Heaven Denied is gone, of course, and will never come back, but this is definitely the closest thing to it.
Superior!
Sweet picks: Welcome Twilight, To the Son I Never Had, Heading For Nowhere
Rating: 9/10
Author: Igorac
Tracklist:
1. Welcome Twilight
2. Accept the Changes
3. Out of Place
4. At the Rainbow’s End
5. The Right Side of This World
6. The Healing
7. Heading for Nowhere
8. Mass Distraction
9. To the Son I Never Had
10. Inhuman Race
Musicians:
Roberto Tiranti – Vocals
Andrea Cantarelli – Guitars
Olaf Thörsen – Guitars
Oleg Smirnoff – Keyboards and piano
Nik Mazzucconi – Bass
Matt Peruzzi – Drums
