Lance personally gave me this disc and said \"Ian, you will love this disc\" or something to that affect. I have been listening to it pretty consistently over the last 2 months and I gotta say what a gem Lance found. The band has a lot to offer from excellent production to talent, also don’t confuse them with the Australian Psychedelic band.

The band began in the mid-90s in France. After a few demos they were picked up Nuclear Blast and had \"Meeting In The Mist\" released. This release is their most recent and was mastered by Mika Jussila.

The first two tracks are a couple of my favorites so I will begin with them. \"The Beast Within\" is an amazing track to begin an album with. At first the guitar tone almost sounds too thick for the vocal due to the higher pitch, but during the chorus it becomes more of a DRAGONFORCE kind of sound, but the vocals have more of a fullness then DRAGONFORCE. The acoustic part reminds me of something from BLIND GUARDIAN’s \"Nightfall In Middle Earth\" disc. The second track contains an awesome epic chorus with a crazy Prog time signature in the drums and the guitars. The melodies from the backing vocals complement the song extremely nice, though I am not sure if I could even effectively describes it, kudos though.

The third and fourth tracks are solid, but they lack the greatness of my favorites. \"Restless Show\" goes back to the sound of the first two that I liked so much, but it isn’t quite as good. \"Everlasting Farewells\" is easily my favorite track on the album just for its overall epic-ness. It starts off kind of slower with the vocals and the backing chorus giving the song that epic-ness and then it hits the apex and you can feel it in you chest and you kind of get goosebumps on your arms because of the awesomeness that is being bestowed upon your environment. Then back to the slower intro sound to fade out. The final tracks on the album are great too and the fall into the same area as tracks three and four, solid good tracks, but not comparable to my favorite. The last track is a cover of the HELLOWEEN classic and is a pretty standard version to my ears.

I would highly recommend this disc to any fan of epic or melodic Power Metal. Definitely for fans of HELLOWEEN and DRAGONFORCE, but also for fans of more Prog-oriented stuff like PAGAN’S MIND. This will be in my top ten for the year more then likely. ALKEMYST FOR Nightmare Fest 2009!!!
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