This album took me a long time to get into, but it was surely worth the while.
A dreaming, sedative, hypnotic and very pleasant mood seem to flow through this piece, and a lot of this has to do with Günter Werno's completely mind-blowing keyboard performance. He not only gives the songs melody, weight and drama, there is something special about the way his keys works together with the other instruments, he certainly has become one of my favourite key players.
The opener
Nightwalker has that special Günter Werno touch written all over it, a thick and warm climate invites you into a very mystic world. The technical bass from Torsten Reichert and Andy Kuntz's absolutely amazing vocals are some of many great inputs, the chorus being one of those that keeps sticking to your head. All in all a fantastic mid-tempo progressive masterpiece.
Lets look at the three calmer songs on the album, all totally out of this world:
Scarlet Flower Fields is pure magic from start to end. With an emotional and very gloomy lyric we are assigned a brilliant bombastic track with a chorus that's sends shivers down the spine. The keyboard changes from a melody maker into a huge underlying theme creator and what fantastic melodic guitar leads, words come short in describing this genius piece so I'll just stop now.
Healing Tree is if possible even more magical and moving, the music match the lyric about sorrow and loss perfectly. Here's the beginning of the song:
Leaves are falling under my wings, I hear a young boy cry, "Why my father, why my Mum, how can I say goodbye", It ain't easy to get by again, maybe we are leaving from time to time again, and with the lines
Where we go around from here, will we shed another tear, like the seasons we are leaving to return again the whole thing just explodes in a firework of pure bombast and heartfelt emotions, a fascinating moment in the history of music! Ok I like this one, you get that :)
The use of acoustic guitar rhythms, great piano melodies and the amazing and driving split key/guitar solo makes the structure even more intriguing.
Can You Hear Me is one of the most complex songs on the album, very quiet but the details are all over the place, a song with a very calm mood and another of those special all-embracing
Vanden Plas choruses. Günter's flair for both comprehensiveness and catchiness shines bright and Andy's reassuring vocal just fits in so well.
Three songs are quite fast and offers an if not unsophisticated then a more "in the flesh" style:
Cold Wind starts out with a cool piano melody and that it accelerates. The hard riff, moody vocals and the mesmerising keyboard background melt together like it was the most natural thing in the world, marvellous music.
Free The Fire is the albums most direct track, great heavy rhythm guitar riffs leads the way supplemented with double bass drums and an incorporated jamming key solo, followed by a soaring guitar solo. A very good song that nevertheless could have been treated with a more exiting chorus line.
Phoenix is a very intense and heavy track, lots of different layers put into a compact and powerful experience. The slower mid-section is a great treat featuring an totally awesome and shredding guitar solo by Stephan Lill and a dramatic crossing before we are back to the well know binding chorus.
And then we also have two very complex progressive opuses:
End Of All Days is a very difficult and innovative creation; you have to hear this one many times due to its sheer complexity both lyrically and musically before it really comes together.
I really like the way the solid bass and Andreas Lill's varied drums complements each other, the slow mid-section works out splendid too.
Overall this is a fantastic song that challenges the listener all the time, one of the times where unstructured parts in fact enhance a songs quality because it done in such a clever manner.
Beyond Daylight is the albums 10-minutes closing track. It contains some unique and fantastic vocal lines that in a way altered the way I thought a singer could do things. Said shortly this is an over the top, diverse and symphonic musically journey that holds you captured all the way.
The breathtaking mid-section created with mellow piano lines making up a mystic atmosphere and added great reassuring vocals is beyond both daylight and words.
The music can be described as a casual mix of
Dream Theater and Symphony X, but still this band is very original and has developed a very unique style.
The band works on a high technical level and as you might have figured out by now, very variable, all members deliver an outstanding performance and there are plenty of cool details to go and discover.
The production is brilliant, the rhythm guitar, bass and drums lay an immensely solid base, and the keys, vocals and guitar leads are finely balanced into the picture.
Lyrically the themes are spanning themes like love, death, sorrow, inner search for meaning, mystic experiences, the journey of the soul and so on. I'm very fascinated by these poetic and ingenious writings, being extremely beautiful and filled with a certain spiritual depth, being very challenging from time to time.
This disc just has so much to offer, in fact I think it's one of the most complete and thrilling pieces of art ever, it has grown to the status as one of my all time favourite albums, it just has everything.
Written by
Tommy Tuesday, May 18, 2004
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