SONS OF THUNDER

After the great power metal album that was Return to Heaven Denied, Labyrinth are back a couple of years later with an album that... well, an album that for the most part is good. Fast Italian power metal with a lot of cool riffs and guitar solos here, not an overdose of keyboards like Rhapsody and their countless ripoffs provide. The songwriting is a little original, and there's a whole lot of technical skill in the band.

Roberto Tiranti (who calls himself Rob Tyrant) is a great vocalist, one of the only guys with an Italian accent that isn't so thick you can't understand what he's saying. Andrea Cantarelli shreds quickly and has some nice rhythm guitar backing it up, and Andrea de Paoli knows how to be a pretty good keyboardist without killing an entire song with them.

The first song is "Chapter 1", which is a great song. The following song is "Kathryn", which deserves mention because it's one of the best progressive power metal songs I've ever heard. Really. The title track isn't bad either, but through out the album you have some forgettable songs. "Touch the Rainbow" and a cover called "I Feel You" stand out, while the ballad of the CD," Love", isn't half bad. Roberto's vocals need some polishing on a lot of the songs, though. There's also a bit of sub-par songwriting throughout the album, but as a whole it fits to the concept behind it. The production by Neil Kernon sounds a bit too bass-focused and unclear, but it is easy to overhear that problem with the concentration on the music.

If you like your metal played with skill and technicality look no further than this album. Not only that, Labyrinth obviously have some of the most talented musicians in this kind of music and they have the songwriting skills to back it up. The only thing is that this album is harder to get into than their other albums due to the fact that it's quite also a bit more progressive than before. And because of the fact that they don't really follow the typical power metal song structure formula means that this will definately take time to grow on the listener. Chances are you probably will have trouble remembering the names of the songs because they aren't ambigously repeated again and again in every song, but because of the awesome melodies and hook lines this album should be one to stay in the regular rotation of a power/progressive metal fan.

album rating: 8/10 points = 80 % on MPV scale = 4/5 stars

point-system: 0 - 3 points = 1 star / 3.5 - 5.5 points = 2 stars / 6 - 7 points = 3 stars / 7.5 - 8.5 points = 4 stars / 9 - 10 points = 5 stars