lukretion In the 1990s, Italy saw an explosion of symphonic power metal bands, combining German power/speed metal with symphonic and neoclassic influences. Rhapsody are probably the country’s best known export from those years, but Labyrinth, Drakkar, DGM, and Domine are other notable acts that became known throughout Europe and beyond. Hailing from Milan and driven by the skills of keyboard player Eddy Antonini, Skylark were actually one of the first bands to venture into this new genre, but their success has been much more limited than other acts’. The Horizon & the Storm, Skylark’s self-produced full-length debut album, makes it easy to see why.

Antonini’s ambitions are praiseworthy. His idea of mixing the fast tempos and razor-sharp guitar riffs of power metal with delicate piano flourishes and rich symphonic keyboards has potential. However, on this LP the band’s potential comes through as fully realized only in a small number of episodes, like the intro to the epic “Little Girl”, or the majestic organ that breaks through the galloping riffs of “Skylark / Crystal Lake”, or the intro to “Escape from the Dark”. Antonini’s playing is also pretty good and the piano pieces that bookend the LP are nice However, nearly everything else on this album is a disaster.

In ascending order of dismay, the production is simply terrible. It’s a self-produced album, so one should give these guys some slack. But, boy, this stuff is hardly listenable. In short, whenever there are more than two instruments in the mix, everything becomes an undistinguishable drone of noise. The fast drums often bury guitars and bass, and one can barely hear the keyboards crawling out of the mix here and there. Speaking of drums, I feel there is something wrong in what Francesco Meles plays on a few passages of the album. His double bass seems often slightly out of tempo (“Skylark / Crystal Lake”), giving the songs rather shaky foundations.

High on top of this mess lie Fabio Dozzo’s vocals, which can be heard loud and clear. Unfortunately. Because they are pitchy and strained as hell, as Dozzo tries hard to hit those high Kiske-esque notes that he simply cannot reach. Things are much better when he stays in his low range, but of course this isn’t what power metal singers were expected to do back in the day so he often doubles up his vocal lines with a high-pitched squeak that borders on the ridiculous. I may sound harsh, but bad vocals on a power metal album are definitely a killjoy. After all, in this genre the vocals are often the main “instrument” carrying the melody, and if they sound poor, everything else is ruined too.

There is little to save on this LP. The compositions have interesting twists and turns, again showing that Antonini (the main songwriter here) had vision and potential. Some pieces venture even in progressive (“Little Girl”) and metal opera directions (the theatrical “A Star in the Universe” and “Escape from the Dark”). But it is really hard to extract sonic pleasure from the 34 minutes of this LP. Skylark will continue their career for another twenty years with mixed fortunes and leaving an impression of unrealized potential that already transpires quite clearly on this album.

lukretion Skylark occupy a special place in my CD collection because they have been my gateway band to power metal when I was a kid back in the mid-1990s. They were one of the first bands I ever listened to in the genre, probably because they were on heavy rotation on one of the ultra-rare Italian metal radio stations I used to listen to at the time (RockFM). As a result, their 1995 debut LP The Horizon & the Storm was perhaps the first CD I ever bought in the power metal genre (and maybe even overall). Other purchases followed, including The Princess’ Day, Skylark’s 5th full-length album, released in 2001 via Underground Symphony.

Skylark may have managed to impress the 15 years-old version of this writer enough to convince him to buy several of their albums over the course of a decade. However, listened 20 years later, with somewhat less impressionable ears and various dozens of other power metal albums under my belt, The Princess’ Day (and nearly all the rest of Skylark’s catalogue) is terribly disappointing. I can summarize the album’s most obvious shortcomings under three headings: unoriginal and repetitive songwriting, awful production, and shaky vocals. Let’s examine them in turn.

Stylistically, Skylark do not depart much from the tropes of the neoclassical/epic/symphonic power metal genre that was so much in vogue in those years. If you can imagine a mix between Rhapsody (of Fire), Stratovarius and Helloween, you have pretty much nailed down the record’s key coordinates. Now, to their credit, Skylark were among the first to pursue this subgenre in Italy, but in the end that does not mean much when your songwriting is so blatantly rooted in the classic sound of a zillion other similar bands. Perhaps this lack of originality may not be a capital sin in the power metal subgenre, where innovative songwriting is rarely a priority. However, it does become bothersome in the context of this album, because all songs end up sounding almost identical to one another. Seriously, while listening to this CD, there have been times when I did not even realize a new track had started, because of how similar all the songs sound, in almost all aspects: tempo, structure, the way melodies are constructed, and even the lyrics.

Adding to the detriment of the repetitive songwriting, the production is terribly amateurish. Carlos Cantatore’s frantic, relentless double-bass drumming often drowns out all other instruments, especially the rhythmic guitar and the bass. Eddy Antonini’s keyboards have somewhat more prominence in the mix, taking further space from the guitars. At times, all one can hear are keyboard chords barely emerging from a double-bass drum drone. There are also mad swings in the levels of the lead instruments, for example in “Journey through the fire” when Antonini’s harpsichord is suddenly pushed upfront in the mix in a way that makes it feel completely detached from the rest of the instruments. The same occurs with Roberto Potenti’s bass in “Another Life”. The end result is a very odd-sounding album, lacking power and depth, and with glaring inconsistencies in the mix.

Fabio Dozzo’s vocals are another issue here. He has improved quite a bit compared to the days of the band’s earlier albums. Nevertheless, his performance is still tentative, mostly because he just does not have the range to hit those crazy-high, Kiske-sque notes that Eddy Antonini insists in writing for him. Fabio’s singing is OK as long as he stays in the mid-range, but his high-pitched vocals are really poor. At best, he sounds incredibly strained, at worst he is just out of tune. This is a pity, because the other musicians’ performances are actually decent. I especially enjoyed the guitar solos, which may not be particularly innovative with their standard, high-speed neoclassical metal phrasing, but are well constructed and performed. Eddy Antonini’s keyboard solos and arrangements are also quite good, and Roberto Potenti’s bass solo in “Another Life” is interesting too. Carlos Cantatore’s drumming is much tighter compared to Skylar’s original drummer Francesco Meles, although the drum sound is still quite poor overall.

These small redeeming qualities save The Princess’ Day from total disaster. They are not enough, however, to allow me to recommend this record to anyone other than die-hard Skylark aficionados and collectors. As to the 15-year old me who first got hooked on this band, what can I say? Youthfulness and all that comes with it, I guess.

adg211288 Twilights of Sand is the ninth studio album from Italian power metal band Skylark. The 2012 album marks the band’s first studio album to be released since 2007’s Divine Gates Part 3: The Last Gate. It’s also the first album to feature the vocals of new lead singer Ashley. Ashley is the group’s third lead singer, but only the second female singer, as the group was for a long time a male fronted act (and then a dual male/female fronted act, then finally just a female fronted act). Although I’ve been aware of Skylark for some time now, Twilights of Sand marks my first encounter with their music.

Based on this album, it may also be my last. That’s not to say that overall the album lacks anything to be praised, it does have a few positive aspects to it but the problem here is that nothing seems to be coming together very well on any level. First off the album gets off on completely the wrong foot with the symphonic introductory track The Tears of Jupiter. As far as intros go it isn’t too bad, with a mix of spoken words and actual singing, so it does have a bit more effort put into it than most intro tracks. The problem with it is not that it feels so introductory, as far as those go it has credibility, but because the symphonic sound does nothing for me. It sounds synthetic, in that it’s there because it can be there, sort of thing. There’s nothing epic about it in the slightest.

But enough about a track that doesn’t even last two minutes. The next track, Tobe! Glendizer, only makes matters worse. I’m not sure what language this is in, and I’m not even convinced it’s not a load of nonsense, even sticking lines of the lyrics in Google Translate didn’t provide much clue, coming up with a different language for each line. Regardless it’s not the lyrics that bother me here, it’s that the whole track sounds utterly ridiculous. It reminds me more of some daft sing-along song in a little children’s TV show. You know the sort, no matter if you have kids yourself or just remember them for your own childhood, it’s the sort that will drive the parents up the wall. That’s what this song sounds like, only it has a power metal riff going on through it. Since they included a version of the track especially designed for karaoke as a bonus track on the Japanese version of the album I’m not sure that wasn’t the intent. The track is in no way entertaining and it’s not even power metal cheese in a good way. It is the worst track I’ve heard for some time though. I guess that’s a (dubious) achievement of its own. Unfortunately although this is definitely the most prominent case, I also get the whole children’s music vibes off of some of the other songs on the album, although in those cases it’s more the case of the vocal tone and more use of those synthetic keys.

Fortunately for the band and my ears things pick up with Twilights of Sand’s third track, The Princess and Belzebu. Not by much, but at least enough to save my sanity. Up to this point Twilights of Sand hasn’t given the listener much of a real experience about what it’s about; that only really starts here, and what we’re dealing with is keyboard driven Euro power metal. Now I’m a fan of the power metal genre, and I’ll defend it when it gets insulted as it often does from supposed metalheads who don’t have a clue what they’re talking about, but Twilights of Sand is one of those albums that quite legitimately gives the genre a bad name.

What we’re talking here is not something that is typical cheesy power metal, because it’s really not cheesy sounding at all, it’s because the sound the band puts across is not working. First off the production job is pretty bad, which lets the material that is stronger down a fair bit, and although she had a decent voice, there are many moments on the album where it doesn’t sound as if Ashley has a voice that is cut out for metal. Some of the tones she comes out with sound like something I expect to hear in a commercial pop song, which is especially apparent in the non-metal parts of the album. I reiterate that she does have a good voice, and when her singing does work with the material it works really well, but more often than not the vocals and the music just seem out of sorts with each other. The only actual criticism I have for her actual vocals though is when she tries to hit the high notes. It’s very clear listening to those that she doesn’t quite have that range, and it shows.

That coupled with how patchy the actual material is makes the album something of a drag to get through. Its highlights stand out well because of this, but there’s nothing on offer that moves beyond merely good territory. I’d say Love Song is the best song here and She and Mystery of the Night are also pretty good but in general the album ranges from above average to very bad. Some of the tracks are just too long and outstay their welcome. But the biggest problem with this album is that it’s generally boring. The good moments are too few and far between to save it. After those first two tracks have gone by there isn’t anything offensively bad but at the same time the lack of real moments of epic awesomeness even in a cheesy way is what makes Twilights of Sand a really lacking album for power metal.

I haven’t heard much power metal from this year yet, but I’m sure that there are going to be a lot of stronger offers in the field that do the genre justice. I’d say for Twilights of Sand however a below average/fans only rating is most appropriate.

3.9/10

(Originally written for Heavy Metal Haven (http://metaltube.freeforums.org))