THE GHOST XPERIMENT - AWAKENING

I like Vanden Plas (the band). They are very consistent - heavy, dramatic and melodic. The German formation have followed the 2014/2015 double album set Chronicles of the Immortals with yet another two-part gothic fantasy saga. This one is probably their most amibitious to date (I know, there's a tendency for reviewers to label in such terms a band's every other successive work, but here an objective criteria like the average song lengths may well be used). And they have wisely divided it in two installments, because to be honest, the trademark Vanden Plas sound from album to album would differ only to a very dedicated ear, and 100 minutes of this bombast would be hard to absorb in one serving.