Artist: Lanfear Album: Another Golden Rage Label: Nightmare Records Website: http://www.lanfear.eu Reviewer: Chris Piccirillo

Track List: aNother gOlden rAge (5:12) The Unrestrained (4:05) Dispraise (4:17) Transmigration (4:21) Eclipse (1:23) Shades of Black (5:59) The Voice Within (3:56) In Silence (4:52) Eternally (3:55) What...For (5:03) Outliving the Ages (7:15) I’ve learned that Lanfear is the name of a primary character in Robert Jordan’s ‘Wheel of Time’ fantasy series. I’ve also learned that it’s the name of a fantastic metal band from Germany. Their 4th CD “Another Golden Rage” is a fast paced, technically proficient and extremely catchy foray in to that realm where prog and power metal meet. The band’s strength lie with the high pitched vocals of Tobias Althammer and the relentless riffing of Markus Ullrich. The “power” side of the equation is solved by the majestic keyboard additions by Richie Seibel. His symphonic sound is similar to Symphony X’s key wizard, Michael Pinella. The double bass workout played by Jurgen Schrank machine guns his way through the album never seeming to tire. Some blast beats in “Shades of Black” along with some growling vocals mix up the formula just enough to keep it interesting. The production is crisp, clear and completely fits the music. The bass never gets lost as it sometimes does in this kind of music and it anchors the low end while keyboards and guitars swirl in the higher frequencies. A great engineering job by Jan Vacik at Dreamscape Studios. The songs themselves range from a short 1 and a half minute keyboard interlude “Eclipse” to the seven minute closer “Outliving the Ages”. The impressive thing about these songs is how each is very captivating and leaves you with a melody stuck in your head. I know this is nothing new to the Power Metal genre, which is chock full of anthemic choruses and sing-along melodies. Lanfear manages to capture all of that but adds a bit of an edge to their sound. The lyrics are typical for this style of music but never get overly corny and in the way, which is a welcome change. With all this good, there has to be some bad…and it’s in the form of a ballad; “Eternally”. The cheesy keyboard sound and a straight from an 80’s movie soundtrack sax solo just do not fit on this record. Thankfully it’s only a short 4 minutes and it does have some very good vocal harmonies to offset the above mentions. I know what they were going for here, but I just don’t think it was needed. In April of 2006, Tobias, the vocalist of Lanfear has been replaced by Nuno Miguel de Barros Fernandes from the band Anguish. Due to the fact that Lanfear manages to walk the line between power and prog metal, they should have a pretty wide appeal with their catchy melodies and teriffic musicianship. Unfortunately, since they do exist between the two camps they tragically may be not prog enough nor powerful enough for either, and that would be a shame. Band Members: Tobias Althammer – Vocals Markus Ullrich – Guitars Richie Seibel – Keys Jurgen Schrank – Drums Kai Schindlelar - Bass