LIGHT OF DAY, DAY OF DARKNESS

I'm not feeling this. Even if the drums were acoustic (if those are acoustic drums, then Kobro should be ashamed of his drum set), and even if the guitar wasn't incredibly overpowering, and even if the album was sliced into songs (which of course isn't necessary at all, but many find it so) and even if the blaring heavy metal was toned down, and the colourful, trance-inducing moments were extended, this album would still not cut it for me.

You're listening to this album - rather, you're pledging an hour of your life to this music, and the glorious, climatic ending is approaching and you start to get excited, and this whole hour is about to pay off. Guess what. No pay off, no glorious rise, no "Aching Men's Feet", no "Land's End", no Grand Finale. Instead, we get a repetition of the main riff, which has the exact mood as the majority of the album, leading into a distorted music box playing a tacky lullaby.

Despite these significant flaws, there is really some great music here. A lot of the riffs and melodies are beautiful, or genuinely exciting, and the atmospheres are all fantastic. The addition of orchestra at certain points is quite affective. The soft sections, comprised mainly of acoustic guitar, soft female voices, and keyboard-spawn atmospheres, are very well played. My only problem with this/these section(s) is when a woman blasts, rises to a higher note, blasts, rises, blasts, rises. It's very (dare I say) cheesy, and the woman doesn't do a phenomenal job. Also, the 60 minutes tend to drag on, more often than not. The lyrics, at times, are interesting, but aren't altogether fantastic or fresh.

It's a decent album that lands somewhere between 2 stars and 3, but unfortunately is held back by many flaws and a terrible ending.

(Post Script: To those who proclaim this concept of one 60 minute song groundbreaking: Mike Oldfield did this 11 years earlier, and Arvo Pärt did a 71 minute song, too!)