ZANTEA CHRONICLES: THE NIGHTMARE AWAKENS

The triumph of good over evil that Forbidden Myth posits in its mythological "Zantea Chronicles : The Dream Dominator" has a less comforting and more sombre second part three years later with "Zantea Chronicles: The Nightmare Awakens" (2024), an album that in its 70+ minutes traces the perilous mission of "Derolt", a banished and renegade tanner, guided by the lord of the abyss "Vosar" to free the inanimate and evil queen "Jahat", confined in an eternal stone prison.

From the intriguing atmosphere that suspenseful synthesizers and melancholic classical piano chords build in the desolate "Overture of Rage", keyboards drive the story of "The Nightmare Awakens" like the imperishable seventies hammonds and the dazzling Wakemanian minimoog in the descriptive "The Puppet", or Bob Katsionis' sprightly synthesizer in the wooded robustness of "The Screaming Paradise" and where, on the other hand, Antonis Adelfidis' raspy guitar recreation of the Hohner Clavinet, also of great incidence in the rushing "The Petrified Forest" and in the hypnotic half-time of "The Most Precious Gift" (further nuanced by Dimitra Preari's beautiful vocal performance), add a great vitality and forcefulness to the themes.

The final section of the work is marked by the misty ritual to awaken "Jahat" in "Back from the Death", who once freed ends the life of "Derolt" (what else could be expected from such an evil character...) and claims revenge in the epic and dramatic "Jahat Arisen", a piece sustained by the unrelenting percussion of the consistent The Swede (as in the whole album) and that leaves the door open for a third chapter of the saga.

"Zantea Chronicles: The Nightmare Awakens" is a very good album, and although placing some instrumental bridges between the transitions of the tracks might have helped to a greater fluidity and sense of unity being a conceptual work, it is solidly sustained by the very solid musical and narrative staging of the band led by Adelfidis.

3.5 stars