BEYOND TWILIGHT

43 songs on one short album? Sounds gimmicky. But the tracks flow together to create something very close to a masterpiece.

Other than the huge number of very short tracks, there's nothing real unique about this music. That, and the short length, are the only things keeping this from being a perfect album. It's solidly in the progressive metal camp, with some hints of power metal and plenty of classical influences. Stays fairly heavy throughout, without getting too heavy. Wonderful clean metal vocals, handling a wide range. With 43 tracks, things change quickly, and there is not a single second of boredom here. The music is not apologetic about being metal or about being progressive, but unlike a lot of other progressive metal it is by no means a Dream Theater clone. These are very talented musicians but there's never a focus on showing off--the music is very tightly written.

I've only listened to this six or seven times. Maybe eventually this will join my short list of five star albums. For now, though, an excellent 4.5. Highly recommended for fans of progressive metal.

More than 16 years have passed since its release, and this work of art is still fresh and exciting. A perfect mix of creativity and intuition. The album never made me say, "Hey, this part could've been better...", or even "Hey, awesome, but..."

This masterpiece is vastly intricate, labyrinthine, complex; yet it still flows mesmerizingly. An adventurous trip inside the peculiarly dark (with a twilight glow) intellect of the band's mastermind: Finn Zierler. It is actually like a "twilightning"; not because of the fact that the album's duration is short, but because it dispreads a zigzagged line through the sky, none of whose transition points gives a disjointed feeling. What makes this different from a lightning is that, some shadowy phenomena can/'t be observed within this zone. Anyway, all the constituents in the album were so craftily appended that you'd do anything not to lose a piece of this puzzle. A bedazzling experience is granted, nor is this all, one is also granted with the key(s) to be able to get away from this maze. Do you have a clue? If not, you can use those keys to unlock the mysteries inside this labyrinth. I personally wouldn't mind doing that forever!

FtLoAatM is so timeless and rejuvenative that, the genius Finn Zierler's inactivity to produce further stuff (albeit except for his "solo" album: ESC) or his decision to discontinue Beyond Twilight aren't posing a real problem.

As I always say: It is always better to produce nothing if you don't feel like doing it, or if you don't feel motivated and inspired enough (and also if you happen to decide doing "djent", hahah).

Art for art's sake, for [%*!#]'s sake!

P.S. I'll always be delighted to hear new stuff by F. Zierler, but even if he decides not to produce anything anymore, I still thank him wholeheartedly for creating some of the most stellar albums ever; the most prominent of which is this final Beyond Twilight album. Or is this really the "Finale"?..

Impeccable craftsmanship

10/10

When his previous band, power metal act Twilight folded, Danish keyboard player Finn Zierler embarked in a new project, aptly named Beyond Twilight to mark a sort of continuity between the two bands. In fact, Beyond Twilight begin where Twilight ended: Zierler's new creature takes the power metal epicness of his former band and morphs it into a dark, progressive beast that may draw parallels with acts like Kamelot and Evergrey for the brooding, theatrical nature of the music on display. If you are however expecting a minor record that follows the footsteps of the aforementioned more well-known acts ? think again: The Devil's Hall of Fame is a stunning masterpiece that vastly surpasses most releases in the dark progressive/power metal genre. Here is why.

First of all, Beyond Twilight's line-up on this release can count on one of the most formidable singers in metal: His Majesty Jørn Lande. Here at the beginning of his lustrous career, the Norwegian vocalist combines the grit and power of Ronnie James Dio with the soulful delivery of David Coverdale. His performance on The Devil's Hall of Fame is absolutely spectacular, injecting power and feeling into beautiful vocal melodies that are catchy and instantly memorable, but never banal or boring. The rest of the lineup is also very solid. Bassist Anders Lindgren and drummer Tomas Fredén, who had already played on Twilight's debut album, provide a reliable backbone that strikes the right balance between simple groove and intricate playing. Anders Kragh is a skilled and versatile guitarist who adapts his playing to suit the different needs of the music, from muscular no-frills riffs, to subtle melodic leads, to tricky technical passages and blazing solos ("Hellfire"). Beyond Twilight's mastermind Finn Zierler is also a very proficient player. I particularly enjoy the wide range of keyboard sounds and samples he employs on the album, and the use he makes of the instrument ? always very imaginative and inventive.

Strong musicianship counts for little without strong compositions. Fortunately, this album has both. Its eight tracks are exceptional examples of how to write keyboard-driven prog metal that is not just all technical twiddly bits and intricate songwriting, but also has feeling and depth. The intricacies of prog are certainly there, as most songs follow feature frequent tempo changes, plenty of instrumental detours, unusual melodic solutions (the suddenly uplifting second part of the chorus in "Shadowland"), and unexpected turns (the extravagant Latin choirs in the title-track and "Perfect Dark"). But each song is also cleverly anchored in excellent melodic ideas that hook you in and make the music immediately enjoyable and memorable. Credit here goes to both Zierler who composed and arranged all music, and Lande, who wrote the vocal melodies. I also dig the overall mood of the album, dark and ominous. It is a perfect match for the dystopian sci-fi concept that runs through the record, about a man who travels through the depths of his own mind and slowly loses grip with reality.

There are no dull moments on this album. Each song is a small gem, from the bleak and hyper-heavy "Godless and Wicked", to the hard rock accessibility of "Shadowland", to the two short, evocative instrumentals "The Devil's Waltz" and "Closing the Circle". My favourite songs are the title-track and the closing piece "Perfect Dark". The former is a sprawling epic that covers a lot of ground, traversing different moods and musical styles from its doomy first part to the proggy extravaganza that explodes halfway through the second half, in a way that reminds me of Arjen A. Lucassen's best (and heaviest) work with Ayreon and Star One. As per its title, "Perfect Dark" is a perfectly dramatic conclusion to this awesome album. Foreboding, slow and sinister, it is powered by a massive crescendo where Jørn Lande is at its absolute best.

In summary, if you are a fan of progressive metal ? especially its dark, melancholic variety ? you simply must listen to this album. I struggle to find things to criticize (perhaps the sound production is a bit thin), or to pinpoint better records in the genre than this. Instantly enjoyable and with great repeated listen value, The Devil's Hall of Fame is up there with the best music of Ayreon, Evergrey, and Kamelot. Beyond Twilight will go on to record two further albums, although Mr Lande will step down from his role as vocalist after this one. It's a pity, as his vocals clearly play a big role in making this record such a masterpiece. But the quality of the music is really high too, so I very much look forward to listening to Beyond Twilight's other two records as well.

After two incredible albums of high-quality progressive metal, Danish band Beyond Twilight shoot themselves in the foot by getting a bit too artsy and fancy with 2006's 'For the Love of Art and the Making'. The clue is clearly there in the title. At 38 minutes in length, and featuring 43 tracks, each barely a minute long, the idea behind this release is that the tracks can be played in any order and, depending on how you listen to it, it supposedly can bear different meanings each time.

Yeah, alright.

Can anyone truly say they listened to this more than a couple of times without losing interest? Just as you start to enjoy one segment it skips straight to the next. And everything is so disjointed, no matter what order you play it in. In fact, I tried it a couple of times in random orders, and nothing flows smoothly at all. Additionally, it's near-impossible to really understand any of what's going on without actually knowing the lyrics. Bugger that!

It's a huge shame, as Beyond Twilight's previous two releases, 2001's 'The Devil's Hall of Fame' and 2005's 'Section X' are genuinely fantastic albums. These guys are amazing musicians and have an instantly distinctive sound of their own. And while the idea behind 'For the Love...' is interesting and massively ambitious, they just weren't able to make anything substantial come out of it.

I give the album two stars simply because there is some great musicianship and performances, and there are a couple of moments that are pretty neat (if, by pretty neat, you don't mind songs that last barely a minute). But overall, this album is a huge disappointment, and at the time of writing this review the band haven't done anything since. Coincidence? I doubt it. Art for art's sake? Art over substance? Whatever. This album sucks.

Released four years after their debut, 'Section X' gives us a second dark and twisted glimpse into the mindscape of Danish prog metal group, Beyond Twilight. With another concept album based around themes of cloning, manipulation and perversion, it's a pretty bleak story, but it makes for some great music!

Beyond Twilight have a fairly unique and distinctive sound, with lots of dark passages that really conjure up images of perverted horror. Their sound is very gothic and gloomy, with powerful, multi-layered vocals and interplay between numerous guitars and keyboards. It's a very atmospheric release, which is surprisingly short for a concept album (at 45 minutes), but will still require a number of listens to really familiarize yourself with the music.

But that's nothing new to us prog fans, right?

Although there are very slight moments where the music tends to drag and feels self-indulgent, overall the album flows diligently. Highlights include 'The Path to Darkness', 'Section X', 'Shadow Self', and what is probably one of the bands finest pieces, 'Ecstasy Arise'. These songs alone make this album a notable addition to any prog metal fans collection, and help define Beyond Twilight as a truly underrated band that are worthy of your time.

Beyond Twilight came up with a pretty original idea - to create a prog metal opera consisting of 43 short interconnected fragments that are basically a bunch of solos (some of them shorter than the time needed to read their titles), that could be rearranged and still deliver a coherent listen. And this isn't as unrealizable as it may sound, but the secret is that the original order had to not be exactly seamless in the beginning, so the reshuffled version isn't that much more disjointed.

As for stlistics, this is a very bombastic classically inspired heavy metal work but is generally less dark and unsettling than the first two albums by this artist. It's a pity they haven't been heard from in a long time.

Beyond Twilight released a trio of records in the early 2000's, each with a different vocalist (it is a demanding job to be a Beyond Twilight voice, as you will see) that made fans out of the few people that have actually heard of them, before going into a lengthy hiatus. Section X sees the band moving more into the gothic metal category similar to such acts as Vanden Plas or Adagio, but it would be a mistake to liken it to them, because these are not merely songs about vampires, but about... vampires from the future! Or something. Anyway, Section X will not hold many surprises, but does have an identity of its own, by being quite instrumentally busy, highly theatrical and oozing classical influences of band mainstays Finn Ziegler and Anders Kragh.

Beyond Twilight has been described as "dark cinematic metal" and that's fairly accurate. Or you can say "dark Broadway metal" for being highly theatrical and musically dense, requiring attention to details. The emphasis is on vocals and synths and creating a dark and futuristic atmosphere. A lesson for extreme metalheads on how to create disturbing and heavy music without growling and blastbeats. But has its faults, however. For prog, it's short, barely 40 minutes if you cut out the filler, and the longer songs, while being diverse in vocal and keyboard delivery, can sound rhythmically monotonous. And there surely must be a limit on how many times you're allowed to rhyme fire with desire. Seriously guys, when you come from an obvious classical background, there must be a colleague out there who can help out with the lyrics. In summation, Beyond Twilight may be of interest for prog metal completists, always out for an obscure band from the Nordics (in that case, I would also suggest fellow Northerners Dreamscape and Atmosfear as examples of fine but completely unknown bands), and fans of vocalist-for-hire Jorn Lande, who really delivers a romp here, roaring, crooning, howling and meowing throughout the all-too-short 40 minutes.

Rising from the ashes of power metal band 'Twilight', Danish prog metallers Beyond Twilight's first release 'The Devil's Hall of Fame' is a very twisted journey into the depths of the human mind, and certainly not a record for the weak- hearted.

Having a concept album for a debut can be a big risk for any band, but Beyond Twilight pull it off here, with incredible compositions and production that sound as though they are coming from a band with years and years of experience together. It's exciting to listen to this and imagine what else this group can come up with.

Keyboardist Finn Zierler's layer-upon-layer of dark and gloomy melodies fits perfectly with Anders Kragh's haunting and exciting guitar riffs, all perfectly played in minor keys to bring the best depressions out of anyone. And this chilling and epic tale is told wonderfully by a man who has one of the most "metal voices" out there, Jorn Lande. Highlights of this incredible first- time outing include the dark 'Godless and Wicked', the psychotic and twisted 'The Devil's Waltz' and 'Crying', a song as beautiful as it is chilling.

An interesting and very exciting debut, this certainly isn't the album you'd choose to help lift your spirits, but for some incredibly dark and gothic prog metal, this is a fantastic debut from a band who shows limitless potential.

BEYOND TWILIGHT GO ABOVE & BEYOND BY CREATING A FASCINATING & TRULY BIZARRE CONCEPTUAL ALBUM. 

I shall say first off that BEYOND TWILIGHT have a great album here with the release of SECTION X. SECTION X is a brilliant conceptual album based on some pretty heavy and interesting Sci-fi themes and concepts. In fact; I believe a prologue is needed in this review, so one can get a nice feel for SECTION X's brilliant yet bizarre storyline. Believe me, it adds to the mood for one to actually really want to listen to the album. After all, it's the storyline that got me hooked... in the first place. ;)

The story of SECTION X is about a scientist who discovers Brain Mapping, which is a process that tells us how much of the human brain we use % wise. The scientist (who is in fact nameless) learns that human beings use just 10% of the brain itself. Furthermore, the scientist reveals a cunning and cleaver way to unlock and transfer a persons thoughts, dreams, feelings and visions to any of the unused portions of the brain. By being able to construct this 'window to the brain' the scientist proceeds to create a clone of himself. Going further down the spiral of this radical experiment, the Scientist transfers the contents of Albert Einstein's brain into the clone of himself and the only way this can be done is through virtual reality in the scientist Lab. Now where is gets iffy is that the clone's brain operates exactly like The Scientist Brain, so the thirst and desire for knowledge becomes an excessive and evil fulfillment. The Clone embarks on stealing parts of people's minds who are great musicians, politicians (I've never heard of a great politician) and anyone who has incredible supernatural abilities. Needless to say, the Clone had gone Section H and has acquired a taste for evil, which the clone sees as the most beautiful and purest thing in the world...ah oh! Meanwhile, now that the scientist discovered his clone has gone into a mad stupor by killing and ravishing any human being of worth in his path of reality, The Scientist of course wants to make the clone extinct. The scientist devises a plan to disguise himself as a beautiful woman to eliminate the clone from using and terrorizing human souls. In the end, the Scientist succeeds in killing the clone but when he does kill his doppelgänger his soul begins to crumble in the most unbearable, terrible pain imaginable. Thus, The Scientist soul begins to drown into an ocean of pain creating the most painful death any human has ever been able to experience. Wow! And this is all conveyed through the music!!

Sound like an intriguing story spun into a musical theater of drama and progressive metal!? I should hope so.  Moving on, and to get into the album itself musically, SECTION X is an album that is fueled and centered around the leadership of FINN ZIERLER's keyboards. The keys are lush, vast and extremely creative. I must say, I do enjoy when a band, such as BEYOND TWILIGHT, has a sound that is propelled by synths and keyboards. Its an uncommon thing in Prog-Metal where this occurs cause its usually the Guitars or guitarist that takes center stage. It's the Keys by ZIERLER that dictates the pace of SECTION X, but fans of the acoustic and electric guitar will still be elated with the Guitar mastery of ANDERS EXO KRAGH and rhythm guitarist JACOB HANSEN. Yup. You guessed it! BEYOND TWILIGHT is a double axe wielding guitar band that can shred your face off with some pretty nifty noodling and arpeggios that are so wonderfully high and exalted in the final track of the album, SECTION X. Their is even a choir to back up KELLY 'SUNDOWN' CARPENTER's vocals and stunning chorus line...'This is the wiiiiiilllllllll...forevermooooooooore!!' truly, the SECTION X final track has it all and is the best track on the album. It conveys so much emotion through the incredible musicianship of BEYOND TWILIGHTS capabilities and styles.   But, there is still more to the album than one superb 9:00min epic. The opening track 'BE CAREFUL IT'S MY HEAD TOO' is a wonderful little SCI-FI dialog that explains the cloning procedure is under way, then not long after the 2nd track 'THE PATH OF DARKNESS' gets going and really wakes up the listener with KELLY CARPENTER's moody, screeching and haunting vocals that is accompanied by beautiful keyboards solos and a terrific chorus to the song that takes place for the first time in about 1:35min with in the song. All in all, I have to say that this dark, Sci-Fi album by BEYOND TWILIGHT has some extremely great vocal chorus's placed throughout the album of SECTION X. It's a shorter album being a little under 50min with 8 tracks in all, but the album still gets its point across to the listener with in that time frame just like the ANNO DOMINI album by RIVERSIDE. Sometimes tighter is better. Anyway, the Chorus highlights are in the tracks THE PATH OF DARKNESS, ECSTASY ARISE and of course in the grand finalé SECTION X. KELLY CARPENTER's vocals are simply sublime and he sounds much better when he reaches for the softer, melodic side to his voice.  Another notable mention in the album is the 6th track PORTRAIT F IN DARK WATERS, which is an absolute stunning piano/keyboard solo instrumental from ZIERLER. Here, in this instrumental, you will be showcased with the mastery of ZIERLER's keyboard playing and composition writing. I was truly taken back by how much sheer skill ZIERLER has as a musician and writer. A very big highlight is PORTRAIT F, but it's sadly a short track clocking a little over 2min 30seconds....needless to say I wish it was longer! Ok, so I guess that this is where I will make my disappointment clear on this album.  ZIERLER should have made his instrumental longer and I also felt that SHADOW SELF and THE DARK SIDE were mediocre tracks that didn't blow me away...probably because the chorus was weak in both ;) That is all I can say where I was a bit unhappy, but the album as a whole is rock solid by tying together a very complex story and concept with in a musical theater of sound. 

In Conclusion, SECTION X merits a 4/5 for musicianship and originality from my point of view. I think a lot of SCI-FI junkies will really appreciate the subject matter and fans of NEO PROG will absolutely love the keyboardist/song writer and composer in  FINN ZIERLER. A real treat! Anyhow, this album comes highly recommended from yours truly, and i urge those who decide to give this SCI-FI beast a go to turn the lights off and play it very loud. :) 

In the name of prog....enjoy with all your heart.