A Flame to the Ground Beneath

“A Flame to the Ground Beneath” is the second release from Swedish power/proggers Lost Horizon. The album bears much the same message as the first album, but is a bit more complex, polished, and generally mature this time around.

Like “Awakening the World”, this album features a couple of synthy-instrumental tracks. They’re decent mood-setters, but the first track, “Transdimensional Revelation” is mostly just spacey noises with no melody. Any strangeness or doubt is swiftly driven away by “Pure”. The song blasts off with driving drumbeats and a great guitar hook, and doesn’t slow down for the duration. Daniel Heiman quickly makes it clear, however, that he’s not leaving all the attention to the guitars, launching into his incredibly potent singing and melodic screaming with gusto (if you haven’t heard this man sing, there’s really no one else like him). “Pure” is probably the strongest shorter track on this album, being up-tempo and catchy throughout. It’s also the introduction to this album’s round of existentialism, for which Lost Horizon are well known (the group is equal parts power metal band and messengers of the existentialist philosophy).

“Lost in the Depths of Me” begins considerably slower, with a grand introduction, before featuring a couple of very precise guitar solos which introduce the main melodic theme. This one clocks in at almost nine minutes, and there’s some great musicianship. Next, “Again Will the Fire Burn” provides us with a shorter listen. It’s a well-crafted song, but doesn’t provide quite as much interesting material as the previous tunes.

A brief interlude, “The Song of Earth” is a synthesizer arrangement that provides a floating, ethereal introduction into “Cry of a Restless Soul”. The vocals enter immediately on this one, and there’s some excellently executed tremolo picked rhythm lines and layered melodic screams that make this song a fantastic listen. Heiman has the spotlight for the majority of the time, as the song runs its eight and a half minute course. Immediately after “Cry of a Restless Soul” comes to an end, Heiman rips everything back open with a tremendously high bellow that is the prologue to “Think Not Forever”. At a slightly slower pace, a more mellow chorus, and with a simpler song structure, this song could be picked as the “single” off of this album, if Lost Horizon did that sort of thing.

The last song (discounting the again spacey, tuneless “Transcendence” that brings the album to a close) is “Highlander”, subtitled “The One”. This monstrous, sprawling composition is a feat of musicianship that has rarely been equaled in metal, and is easily worth the price of the album alone. Clocking in at just under 12 minutes, “Highlander” is divided into several distinct sections, and are typically divided by an instrumental segue, accompanied by a scream or two. In my opinion, this is Daniel Heiman’s definitive work. He sings low, he sings high (VERY high, at a soprano high D), and everywhere in between, with tremendous power and passion. The melodies are great, the lyrics hopeful, and the music absolutely of the highest caliber.

And really, that sums up the whole album. Great production, the drums and guitars are very tight with each other, and will satisfy the rawest or most refined metal tastes. Wojtek Lisicki has made his mark as a songwriter with very satisfying compositions. While the vocals are highlight of any album that Daniel Heiman performs on, the guitars are precise and create excellent solos. My only real complaint with the album is the instrumental tracks that sandwich the rest of the album. “Song of Earth” is a decent little piece, but the minutes of crackly, swooshy sound before and after don’t seem entirely necessary. I’d rather they’d written another 5 or 6 minute quality song instead.

One of my favorite metal albums ever. Lots of raw talent, a good message, and thoroughly enjoyable.