LIGHT OF DAY, DAY OF DARKNESS

A concept album? No, a concept... song. A 60 minute song... that's really unusual, even for a progressive metal band. Hard to review such an album, as it takes many many listens to fully discover and appreciate everything that can be found in a song like this (usually I listen to an album 10 times before submitting a review, this time it took me maybe 40 listens before I could remember the main melodies). The music here is a mix of atmospheric and doom metal with clean vocals (male and female, normal and operatic).

The album starts with a mellow intro with acoustic guitar and the voice of a child. Then the electric guitar makes its first appearance after 3 minutes for what could be the first "main theme" ("Crimson tide... light of day, day of darkness"). The song becomes quiet again for a few moments and then a heavier moment around the 8 minute mark with... two growled words ("voices and.. CALLS" then again "I stumbled and... FALL") that introduce an operatic passage with classical singers (very reminiscent of Therion). The song turns acoustic again after 11 minutes for two minutes of an instrumental interlude before the second main theme of the song starts ("I fell asleep to sweet lullaby... the dream was so enticing... light of day, day of darkness") which ends with a beautiful melodic moment with keyboards. The song then becomes much heavier again with distorted guitars, but with a slow tempo and an alternance of normal singing and operatic singing (very doomy, My Dying Bride comes in mind here). After 22 minutes, the melody changes again, more spacey, a bit like Pink Floyd "One Of These Days" meets Therion (fabulous screaming guitar in the background) for five minutes of instrumental music. After a four minute bridge of doomy metal, the second main theme is repeated until, at the 32 minute mark, the song ends brutally... female vocals can then be heard with a saxophone in the background (this part sounds a lot like The Third And The Mortal, and like most other people here it is my least favorite part on the album - the saxophone solo is nice though, and it would have been great for the end of the song... without the female vocals). Five minutes later, the main song starts again with an acoustic guitar, then the distorted guitars come back again for more doomy metal. At the 40 minute mark, the acoustic solo really sounds like My Dying Bride, or better, The Eternal (a beautiful moment again, and the guitar part after 44/45 minutes *really* sounds like The Eternal). The next 6 minutes see an alternance of mellow parts with gentle vocals and heavy parts with distorted guitars. After 51 minutes, a short moment with a sitar introduces the first main theme again. In fact, the last 7 minutes of the song are close to the first 7 minutes with the sequences played in the reverse order (main theme - mellow part with Tchort's son's voice - intro). Too bad the last minute with the music box ends the song in a pretty weak way...

Rating: 90/100 (5 stars)