CHILDREN OF HURIN

From lovely Italy to the the vast plans and highest peaks of the Middle Earth. The band (a collective of 18 people) offers an intriguing musical journey based on pure and strong symphonic prog tinged here and there with delicate celtic influences.

It's the same pattern of their debut but now the result seems to be slightly more refined and complex than that. The general atmosphere could be easily recognized as the perfect soundtrack for an epic fantasy movie.

The band still continues the challenging work revealing a wide range of styles and influences: you'll find here medieval and languid interludes, celtic and quasi-pop madrigals, strong and hard guitars blended with orchestra and vintage keyboards (moog above all). The same vocal richness of the first album is their trade mark: recitative parts, whispers, operatic singers (bass and soprano), clear male and female singing depending on which part of the Silmarillion they're singing about.

Above all the majestic and powerful opener Morgoth's Profecy which is simply superb and probably their best track until now. It opens with obscure recitative vocals and a soft orchestral movement that gently fades out and gives place to a symphonic tour de force enriched by mellower (quasi jazzy) parts with clarinet, intriguing melody, pizzicato and female vocals in the middle theme. Then, the main theme returns back with its groovy rythm and catching variation (clarinet is also an interesting element). Moog and synths alternating with more dramatic and choral patterns rememering somehow to some fleeting Gryphon parts in their magnum opus Red Queen to Gryphon Tree. All in all this is far from being a prog folk record. Anyway the folk and celtic roots are evident and elegantly absorbed in the ideas of this excellent musical project. Excellent also the pompous parts with french horn.

Another excellent record from a contemporary italian prog band.

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