Label: Frontiers Music Srl.
Release date: 15. 10. 2021
Production: Leverage
Album length: 52.10 min
Genre: Melodic Metal / Symphonic Power Metal
Rating: 9.0/10
It’s simply incredible how Leverage have picked themselves back up. Like a phoenix from the ashes. After a hugely promising start, when they rattled off three very good studio albums in the first decade of the new millennium, they went into a ten-year hibernation. In 2018 they rose from the dead, and the following year they put out a surprisingly solid comeback album called »DeterminUs«. Two years later, its successor is already here: the fifth studio album, »Above the Beyond«.
Leverage work as a sextet, and for the reactivation they brought in two new members, which means that in this new era the band is half renewed. The first is guitarist Mikko Salovaara, the second vocalist Kimmo Blom (ex-Urban Tale, Raskasta Joulua). The latter in particular came under special scrutiny. Luckily for everyone who hadn’t forgotten the band’s name during its long slumber, the new singer didn’t just justify his spot; what’s striking is that his tone is fairly close to his predecessor’s (Pekka Heino). Dominant, distinctive, clean, authoritative and melodic, which guarantees a hefty dose of musicality in the shape of the new Leverage songs. The vocals are confident and convincing in every register.
Given that with »DeterminUs« Leverage put things back where they belong, i.e. in their old spot, »Above the Beyond« is an album that’s at least as good as its predecessor, if not a shade more convincing and confident. Once again it’s packed with some extremely tight, polished, ultra-musical and bombastic tracks that get under your skin right away.
The band is devoted to writing extremely pompous, punchy and hook-hungry numbers. It’s an ultra-musical take on heavy metal that reaches toward hard rock and now and then toward the pop rhetoric of the eighties, but it’s masterfully wrapped in a production that thunders like crazy. »Above the Beyond« breaks off its chain with the ravenous, snappy and lightning-fast Starlight, which has no shortage of festive flourishes in the arrangement and leans on neoclassical elements more heavily than anything else on the album. But it’s the next track, the second one, Emperor, that really hooks the listener, with one of the most striking and hypnotically catchy choruses around. And with pomp inherited at the very least from the golden age of the Eurovision Song Contest, Do You Love Me Now takes first place on the album. Finns will be Finns. They know their craft. And they’re nitpicky perfectionists on top of that. So it’s hard for Leverage to go wrong on the new album. By the time you get to the phenomenal ballad Angelina, it’ll all be clear to you (at the latest).
In their mature years, Leverage have also become more serious composers. That’s what years of seasoning, ripening and experience bring. You can hear it on the album in the intricately worked-out, longer instrumental middle-eight passages, which in no way rob the songs of their drive, punch and listenability. If not earlier, this is pulled off with great harmony and flair in the seven-minute mini-epic Under the Sun. But that’s not yet the peak of these instrumental passages, which are graced by remarkably dynamic, harmonious dialogues between keyboards and guitars (crossfire solos included). »Above the Beyond« keeps its most ambitious composition for the tail end, called Silence. A song full of dramatic mood swings, loads of motif changes, a cunning ride between power metal and hard rock, nine minutes long, and with an eye on the progressive metal crowd too.
»Above The Beyond« sounds lavish and mighty in its sound production at every turn. Orchestral too, if you like. Two guitars with phrases that, combined with the keyboards, deliver an unbelievably bombastic payoff, and the crown on top of all this musical seduction is, as mentioned, the excellent and charismatic voice of Kimmo Blom.
»Above The Beyond« is, then, more than a convincing continuation of the musical story of the reborn and revived Leverage, proving that »DeterminUs« wasn’t just a lucky ‘one-hit wonder’.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Tracklist:
1. Starlight
2. Emperor
3. Into The New World
4. Do You Love Me Now
5. Angelica
6. Under His Eye
7. Falling Out Of Grace
8. Galleria
9. Silence
Lineup:
Kimmo Blom – vocals
Mikko Salovaara – guitar
Tuomas Heikkinen – guitar
Sami Norrbacka – bass
Valtteri Revonkorpi – drums
Marko Niskala – keyboards
