FOR THE LOVE OF ART AND THE MAKING

The third album from those guys makes me feel like "man, Beyond Twilight became a new highlight in the genre". I got introduced to them a few weeks ago, when I heard "Section X". It never really got me falling on my knees, but still made an album that's better than average progressive metal album. "The Devil's Hall of Fame" for instant was much better, but I've got to admit that Jorn's vocals are always the part, no matter where I hear them, that grabs me and never lets go.

Right, that was some introduction, now let's see what mr Zierler and co. give us in this release. Somehow, when I was ordering this cd, I never got the feeling, that maybe I'm wasting my money, maybe this album is highly overrated. I don't know, but I was concerned that this is one of those cd's, that are a must in every prog fan's collection. Well ladies and gentlemen - this is one of those cd's, and I don't really think that anyone will doubt that.

So, why "For the love of art and the making" is so special? Two words - song structures. As you probably already saw, the album contains of 43 tracks, which are forming one, about 37 minutes long composition, so when you start listening to this cd for a first or second time, without watching the tracker, you won't really realize when the passages between the tracks are. Well, there are some passages when the pause between tracks is clear, but most of the time as I said you'll be scratching your head what track are you listening to at the moment. And here we come to the highlight and the main conception of the album - when you set your player to shuffle mode, you'll get a totally new composition, that sounds really good and goes on without a problem. The passages won't be clear and fluent at every combination - that's for sure, but still the effect that you can get when mixing the tracks is amazing. And with 43 of them, the possibilities are truly grand. But forget the shuffle mode - the main attraction, as I see it, is building up the composition by yourself. Well, I haven't got much time so far for playing with it, so I didn't really come up with anything myself, but so far I'm concerned that those three structures that mr Zierler mentions are yet to discover by putting the tracks ("pieces of a puzzle") together in different ways, depending on compositions and lyrics. This is a truly unique concept in the world of music, and - I've gotta tell you - is great fun. I can't wait till I'll get some time to get deeper into the concept, and start builiding myself.

Well' that's about all about the concept and album structure. Now a few words about the music and vocals. It would be a really big shame if that kind of album composition would be ruined by medicore music. Luckily, Beyond Twilight gave us an another reason to smile. The music is superb, the motives that are frequently appearing (like "In the Eyes of My Soul") are composed in several different ways, so you got the feeling that you heard them before, but without beeing boredom. Boredom is excluded. The guys packed so much different tones and feelings in this 37 minutes, that it feels quite shocking. The album is calm, agressive, heavy and light as a feather, there are high peached screams and orchestral choirs, beauty and anger, man it has everything. The new singer presents himself quite well, his vocals are from those "heavy-power" shelves (he kinda reminds me of "Secret Sphere" singer, especially in those quiet moments, when you can feel his specific accent ;P), and fit the music quite well. One could have thought that the album would be truly grand with Jorn Lande on board, but I must say that it's not that type of album with much place for a spectacular voice show-offs. The vocals somehow melt with the music forming a balanced musical mass, that holds perfect level without leaning from side to side, if you know what I mean.

So what you should do? I'll tell you what - go to their homepage, download the sample, listen to it for a few times and get hooked (it contains the fantastic "this is for love of art and the making" vocal line from "In the Eyes of My Soul", plus the pounding music of "Sleeping Beauty - The Journey"). Then, order the album to help support the making of such quintessential music and, the most important part probably, to enjoy the Love that Beyond Twilight offers us. Reassuming, a TRUE masterpiece and without a doubt the best piece of music this year offered us.