Artist: Vanishing Point
Label: Dockyard 1 Records
Release: 2007
Good morning, lost Australian souls! The album “Embrace The Silence” (2005) acted as an early herald, the first swallow of spring, and finally brought Vanishing Point back from the dead, a band every trace of whom had vanished after the release of “Tangled In Dream” (2001) and, in our dearly departed Europe especially, after they opened for Gamma Ray alongside the Finnish polished power metal speedsters Sonata Arctica, on the tour that same year promoting that album. Where the hell did that go, and how damn fast do the years turn?
The previous album didn’t just bring a decisive upgrade in production over “Tangled In Dream”, it also carried the band effectively forward and upward through a solid, well-measured evolutionary step. “The Fourh Season” is simply the confirming proof that Vanishing Point have evidently found themselves at last, thanks to a shaken-up lineup and a truly hardworking, creative drive in the studio, so we can expect plenty more from this band in the future!
What makes Vanishing Point interesting is that their blood count is mostly power metal corpuscles. There’s no need for much beating around the bush or hair-splitting, vehemently deep music analysis, because the album opens with the rolling, ultra-accelerated thunder of double bass drum pedals in Embodiment. Here we have the traditional heavy metal riff template, nothing special at its core, but what builds the whole thing up and gives “The Fourth Season” the dimensions that make Vanishing Point worth your attention are the keyboard arrangements and the ambience brought by the deep, sensual, lower-pitched vocals of Silvio Massaro.
The keyboards are an extremely important building block, managing to create a melodramatic atmosphere of grand scale that, in production terms, locks in fascinatingly with the riff foundation and gives the spectral soundscape of Vanishing Point tremendous depth. At moments Vanishing Point get very effectively close to the borderline of the progressive metal genre. An incredibly fluid and most elementally simplified version of progressive metal. The vocals add an obscure atmospheric touch. They’re clean and glide interestingly through the low to mid registers, while firmly taking command and claiming the role of central figure in the production balance of the band’s sound. The variety and layering of the keyboards keep the album from falling into the monotony and repetitiveness of power metal riffing, with inventive symphonic orchestral elements thrown in. Above all it’s the seductive work on the curtain of synthesizers, the winning trick with which Vanishing Point conjure up convincing epic grandeur and bombast at a high ambient level. The interplay between the instruments is superb in its mutual understanding, and despite a few predictable stylistic power metal templates, it breaks their shackles with a display of highly atmospheric production, riding on the band’s refined sense for serving up the album’s full flow through melodic, motif-driven mastery and highly singable “sing-along” choruses.
Vanishing Point don’t hide the fact that, when it comes to power metal chopping backed by double bass pedals, five years of absence let time run them over. What does that mean? It means fans of Hollywood pixies Rhapsody Of Fire and tin-smith bunnies HammerFall will like it, but with the obscure darkness radiating through the overall mood of the album, comparisons with the energetic similarity of Sonata Arctica, Stratovarius or Nightwish can’t be overlooked either. In short, no new musical invention, but for the band a hugely important re-creation and confirmation of their own essence in the field of the merciless music business. The great quality that “The Fourh Season” makes no secret of says it all. It’s a newly reached developmental milestone, one that lifts the band qualitatively yet another step higher.
Lineup
Silvio Massaro – vocals
Tommy Vucur – guitar
Chris Porcianko – guitar
Adrian Alimic – bass
Christian Nativo – drums
GUEST MUSICIAN:
Leonard Kopilas – keyboards
Tracklist
1. Embodiment (4:06)
2. Tyranny Of Distance (5:24)
3. Surrender (4:09)
4. Hope Among The Heartless (5:12)
5. Gaia (1:37)
6. I Within I (4:02)
7. Behind The Open Door (4:44)
8. Ashen Sky (4:59)
9. One Foot In Both Worlds (5:31)
10. Wake Me (4:31)
11. A Day Of Difference (4:52)
Running time: 49:07
