MÄRCHEN

Sound Horizon has been a project since 2001 that has started slowly by publishing small instrumentals music mainly in a more classic style of music, it was also not that much original for a Japanese release. In 2004, the main composer and project mastermind Revo decided to make his first big album that will be entitled Elysion. He decided to invite some singer and many guest musician to form his first music hall that will become later not only an album, but his first show with comedian, singer and all that come with a project of this kind.

Today, the project has multiplied his complexity and has become something that must be remembered. Märchen, his fifth big project, is something quite peculiar for Sound Horizon, it's in fact the first time the project is heavily influenced by classic Märchen from Germany. It's also his second album to be extremely varied featuring symphonic metal to classic with everything in between. Moira, his predecessor, was the first to be this much varied, but was also incoherent in many ways. Shorter tracks on Moira weren't longer enough for the different ideas to be absorbed by the listener. On this album however, all the songs have a running time of over 6 minutes and 50 seconds except for the conclusion of the album.

The direct impact of this longer running time directly affect the flow of the song that sound as diverse as they could while still having the possibility to fully develop the different ideas without been overwhelming.

The sound of sound horizon is of the upmost crossover, containing classical reference to pure metal and metal guitar solo, rock guitar solo, waltz, folk of all kind, traditional Japan pop music, jazz, stage band, swing and even cabaret hall kind of music. Did I mention that they even mix in this pot some Darkwave music as shown at the beginning of the 7th song. That is where this project is today, and I think they write the most crossover album of at least Japan if not in all of Asia.

There is still place for improvement, Sound horizon sound a bit kitsch sometime and may disturbed people that prefer their music serious or not too happy. At the same time, Märchen is clearly their darkest album since their beginning. There is in fact three kind of people that shouldn't listen to this. First, people that don't like their music extremely varied. Second, people that detest Japanese lyrics and high notes singer and third, people that prefer to have only one mood in the course of their album. People that prefer a varied experience couple with many moods and style, and of course people that already like musical can't go wrong with this record that is the best the band has offer. It's still a five star because nothing in the world exist that is only a bit similar to this, and it's also great in too many ways to say it's only a "very good" four stars album. I consider this album not too much essential, but very close to that actually.