Label: Frontiers Music Srl.
Release date: January 22, 2021
Production: Labÿrinth
Album length: 60.22 min
Genre: Power Metal
Rating: 8.5/10
Labÿrinth are long-lived Italian power metallers with a marked streak of progressive leanings, who got going back in the early nineties. After »Return to Heaven Denied« (1998), the album that defined their sound, and a string of very good records that followed, the band announced a hiatus in 2011. They never said how long it would last, so whether they’d ever come back was anyone’s guess. The year before, the band had put out the second part of »Return to Heaven Denied« and, as the support act for the Finns Sonata Arctica, warmed up the crowd at Ljubljana’s Cvetličarna at one of the shows in early February 2011.
After some diplomatic maneuvering by the label Frontiers Music Srl., Andrea Cantarelli and Olaf Thorsen (born Carlo Andrea Maniani) decided in 2016 to bring the band back from the dead. With top-notch vocalist Roberto Tiranti and the help of seasoned American drum ace John Macaluso, Labÿrinth dropped an excellent comeback album in 2017, »Arhitecture of God«. The latest one, »Welcome To The Absurd Circus«, keeps up the level of its predecessor, though the overall feeling is that Labÿrinth have cranked in a touch more decibels on top of the typical racket of distorted power metal pomp.
Ultra-musical catchiness is once again the band’s main compositional target. The »escapes« into neoclassical structures are far from negligible and remain a band trademark, which, given the general approach of Italian power metal, hardly comes as a surprise. The tracks are again seriously stretched out, mostly thanks to the mid-eight passages, where the band members bounce off each other with wit and sparkle through crisscrossing solo feats between the two guitars and the keys. For orientation, let me toss in the following caricatured »flash of insight«: if Labÿrinth were Finns, they’d probably sit close to classic Stratovarius, and the reverse might hold too.
The two guitarists, who are both original and founding members, remain the band’s driving forces. Thanks not only to their unsuspected guitar wizardry but above all to their songwriting talent, they keep Labÿrinth’s creative focal point alive on the new album too, the same one clearly visible across the back catalog, once you subtract the experimental flop »Freeman« (2005) and the albums without Thorsen in the lineup, which, though power metal, clearly lag behind the band’s other achievements when it comes to songwriting. The new album is further proof that Labÿrinth always work best when Thorsen is in the lineup.
The album is a full hour long. It could definitely have been at least ten minutes shorter, if not more. Extravagance and frills remain Labÿrinth’s middle name, and that’s one of the main reasons the band keeps its followers happy. The strongest tracks are actually the longest ones on the album: the superb opener The Absurd Circus right off the bat, then One More Last Chance and the closing Finally Free. The band also decided to include a cover of the classic Ultravox hit Dancing With Tears in My Eyes. A song that says everything it has to say in under two minutes in the original is maybe not the best fit for a full-length record by a band like Labÿrinth, since every extra minute feels like a bit of minute-theft. But anyone who knows the band’s first album especially will get that Cantarelli is a big fan of eighties pop, so the move is no surprise. The ballad A Reason To Survive also brings nothing but a different rhythmic key and puts the brakes on the otherwise strongly dynamic record, which develops exactly what has always made Labÿrinth so appealing. Blistering playing speed and total control over the instruments, coming from the incredible drilling of each individual player.
Tiranti’s vocal performance absolutely has to be singled out. Once again it’s flawless. His range is downright staggering. Given power metal’s predictability, this singer’s vocal approach is a key factor that gives the songs and the album that engraved quality which, time after time, guarantees a departure from the feeling of generic. The guy is, by the way, a hugely respected and in-demand name on the scene. While Labÿrinth were idle, he helped out, among other things, in the backing crew of Ken Hensley, the iconic Uriah Heep Hammond organist, who passed away last October. Labÿrinth simply can’t be imagined without Tiranti. The vocalist breathes magic into the album, amplifies the colorfulness of the captured moods, and with his passion and fire boosts the album’s theatricality. He’s a key element that adds big pompous reach and bombast to the product.
In short: »Welcome To The Absurd Circus« is yet another excellent album that fans of European power metal of the typically Italian school will add to their collection without hesitation.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Track list:
1. The Absurd Circus
2. Live Today
3. One More Last Chance
4. As Long As It Lasts
5. Den Of Snakes
6. Word’s Minefield
7. The Unexpected
8. Dancing With Tears In My Eyes
9. Sleepwalker
10. A Reason To Survive
11. Finally Free
Lineup:
Roberto Tiranti – vocals
Olaf Thorsen – guitar
Andrea Cantarelli – guitar
Oleg Smirnoff – keyboards
Nik Mazzucconi – bass
Mattia Peruzzi – drums
