Kev Rowland I must be honest, I wasn’t exactly looking forward to playing the latest album from Twilight Force, having not been a fan of their previous two efforts, and when it commenced with a spoken intro which reminded me for some reason of ‘He-Man and the Masters of the Universe’ I inwardly groaned. But what was this? Soaring orchestration over the top of a metal band in full flow with drumming powering it along? Who found the controls in the production suite and turned up the bottom end? Hang on, that’s a new singer as well, and although he can hit the high notes he also sings lower with plenty of passion and emotion. A quick look at the press release and I see that the new singer is Allyon, but given everyone in this band likes to use pseudonyms I did some more checking and realised this is none other than Allessandro Conti who has been working with Fabio Lione in their own band, and was also in Luca Turilli’s Rhapsody for 7 years prior to joining Twilight Force. He is a bona fide rock star in the world of power metal, and all of a sudden this band has come to life.

All the strengths have been kept from the previous two albums, but the weaknesses and concerns have been dissipated and here is a band which is playing as if their lives depended on it. This is such a step up from the previous two albums that it is almost like a brand new band, but the only new person in the band is Conti – everyone else was on the last album, while just rhythm guitarist Aerendir didn’t feature on the debut as he joined afterwards. But the dynamics have changed, the production and arrangements have greatly improved and here is a band on a roll. I may not have enjoyed the first two, but this one has been on my player a great deal, as even the twee moments which annoyed me on the first two here make me smile as the context is so much better. Definitely worth investigating.