After the great success Beyond Twilight got with their debut album ”The Devil’s Hall Of Fame”, the band had some expectations to live up to. Everybody from the band’s fans, to the more professional part of the metal scene, has been waiting with anxiety to listen to Beyond Twilight’s new album. And with all the “hype” there quietly has been built up through the press, is the interest for Beyond Twilight and the expectations for the new album not faded.

Musically does Beyond Twilight offer bombastic theatrical rock blended with harder metallic elements. The Danish/Swedish band with the American singer, displays bombastic compositions, which possesses listenable music and lot of progressiveness. It is incredible how many elements every single track possesses, especially when one consider the intact red thread through the single tracks, and the album as a whole. Even though the album offers a cornucopia of technical delicacies, sublime details and progressive elements, the band never loses the thread and the song remains in focus. It suggests of an enormous preliminary work, due to each composition being as complex as it is, very worked through I have to say.

Musically there aren’t any flaws to find on the album. All the musicians are doing their job to perfection. The guitar work is in a league for itself, good riffs, great melodies and leads. The drums are delivering both tight rhythms and small delicacies, which makes one delighted. The bass is big and beautiful, though it could have surfaced in the sound picture more often. The keyboard playing is equilibristic and in its own major league. The keyboard is always putting the final touch on the music, when it is used. On top of that do we have the vocals, delivered by, the not yet very known, Kelly Sundown Carpenter. He had to continue where Jorn Lande left, and that is for sure not an easy task. Though Kelly does it perfectly, and he does even deliver a stronger performance, than Lande did on “The Devil’s Hall Of Fame”. Though it has to be said, that the band and the compositions are stronger now, it has something to say as well.

Every track takes us on a rollercoaster ride of dimensions. We experience everything from joy to frustrations, claustrophobia and anger. All the way through the album we are getting bombarded with atmosphere on different levels. The vocals, the guitars, the keyboard, the story line. It all adds up to a higher whole, and when one think rock bottom or the heaven is reached, do Beyond Twilight squeeze the lemon a bit further, superb.

The production on the album is grand and powerful, there is so much juice and power behind the sound, that it runs in streams down the speaker. There is a lot of air in the production, so all the instrument’s details can be heard. The instruments are well placed in the mix and that brings a great depth to the sound picture, a technical great production and very listenable.

This must without a doubt be one of the finest albums we will see this year. The musical qualities are in top and we are treated technical supremacies from the start to the end, lots of details and a great vocal. I haven’t become the slightest tired of the album yet, and I don’t think it will happen in the nearest future. There are so many details, which surfaces within each listen of the album and makes the experience of “Section X” bigger and bigger. This album has to be heard and experienced, it contains so much more than words can express.

[This review was first published on the now defunct scandinavianmetal.info webzine]

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