Reviewed by Dylan Raine

Artist: FOGALORD
Album: A Legend To Believe In
Label: Limb Music
Date of Release: 05 October 2012

Tracklisting:

01. Follow The Fog
02. At The Gates Of The Silent Storm
03. Black Era
04. The Fog Lord
05. The Scream Of The Thunder
06. A Legend To Believe In
07. The Dark Prophecy
08. A Day Of Fire
09. Our Last Nightfall
10. Strength Of The Hopeless
11. The March Of The Grey Army
12. Of War And Resurrection

Italian Symphonic/Epic Metal band Fogalord released their “A Legend To Believe In” which comes alive through its hymn-like, epic songs, gaining power and energy from bombastic melodies. The classical influence seeps through every track and serves to support the historical statement of the tracks. Dany All, ex-SYNTHPHONIA SUPREMA, with whom he released two albums, “The Future Ice-Age” (2010) and “Synthphony 001” (2006) is the driving force behind Fogalord, showing a talent for writing good, classical compositions, he has quickly gained a good reputation on the Italian music scene.

With the mixture of effects and choirs blasting in from everywhere you really are taken on an interesting journey. In terms of music, there’s nothing we haven’t heard many, many times before everywhere else. The solos are exceptionally good, but we’d kind of hoped they were.

So the first five tracks are very generic of this genre and being a big fan of Symphonic metal, Power Metal and Folk Metal I am rather disappointed thus far. The album has got some good elements in terms of interesting riffs and drumming, also those synths and choirs are quite special, but the album as a whole just lacks substance. I suppose if we look at this alongside Turisas, Eluveitie, Luca Turilli, then I’m not really feeling a difference. Nothing really jumps out and screams “Look at ME“.

“A legend to believe in” starts with the Neo-Classical arpeggio sweeps very common in this type of music and very common place in the world of Yngwie Malmsteen. The song itself isn’t too bad at all, sounds like the past 4 tracks, but has those sweeps which allows it to differ slightly.

The intro to “Our Last Nightfall” is just fantastically written, combing such a wide array of instruments and voices throughout. It is a nice step back from everything that has happened up to now. Into what I like to describe as a “Erotic” solo from those rich toned guitars joining the orchestras and wonderful vocals, this is a wonderful song throughout. With the last track standing in at an impressive 15 minutes 40 seconds everything is thrown in for one last shot at hitting your ears hard. The symphonies are wonderful, the vocals are expressive and the music is well created, problem is it’s taken an entire album to get here.

Overall

There’s no doubting these are talented musicians, and with Dany All on the vocals it is very powerful indeed. I’d put this alongside Dragonforce, Iced Earth, Edguy, Luca Turilli, etc… Add to this those beautiful orchestras like in “The Dark Prophecy” and you really do have something quite special. But if you’ve heard good Power Metal/Neo-Classical/Symphony Metal then this will just vanish in your expectations.

If you don’t end up skipping through the tracks to find something unique then you’re in for an “Interesting” journey. I listened to the entire album… Twice, and wasn’t overly impressed.

6.5/10

Line-up:
Stefano Paolini – Guitar
Dany All – Vocals + Keyboards
Lorenzo Costi – Bass
Francesco Zanarelli – Drums

http://www.fogalord.com
http://www.myspace.com/fogalord
http://www.youtube.com/fogalord
http://www.reverbnation.com/fogalord
https://twitter.com/fogalord

Label:
http://www.limb-music.de/