Rain Of A Thousand Flames

Not a new full length album, but yet a powerfully charged EP, with more than 40 minutes of music, for the sole pleasure of all Rhapsody's fan. After only a few seconds, I knew I would like that album. Why ? Simply because Rhapsody went back on their Symphony Of Enchanted Land sound (thanks god !!!!!). Like most of you know, I simply hated the third album (and I still do). It was a joke, and a bad one if you ask me, with artistic errors every minutes or so, and this "dark" feeling that simply doesn't go for a band like Rhapsody. This new EP is a really good surprise, it contains 7 songs, where one is a piano interlude track (wonderfully played by the way), and one a spoken track. The spoken track is really nice, the music in the back is epic, powerful and moody. The voice of the storyteller can vary from interesting to ridiculous sometimes :(, and that's too bad. I'm sure Rhapsody can afford to take a professional narrator, like you hear on Hollywood movie trailers. As for the songs, they're highly melodic, highly orchestrated (probably the best orchestrations of the band so far !). With nice additional female vocals on the excellent song : Queen Of The Dark Horizon which rumbles on for more than 13 minutes ! What a voice my friends, it's like hearing an angel sing. This song contains the soundtrack's main theme of "Phenomena". I believe Rhapsody have understand their mistake, and I'm the first to be very happy about it. The album contains another long song that concludes the album to the best way possible, called The Wizard's Last Rhymes. This one contains excerpts from a very well known epic and classical piece : New World Symphony composed by Antonin Dvorak. The songs are epic to the bones, with simply incredible choirs !!!! I still can't believe my ears, these choirs are really exceptional, the best Rhapsody delivered so far. A little word on the artcover. A-M-A-Z-I-N-G !!! This piece is simply blowing me away ! Not even in my dreams will I be able to draw something that approaches this, but I will for sure try ;). Congratulations for that epic work of art ! An impressive EP, giving the fans a jewel while waiting the new album. I'm very happy they did release that EP, because I didn't waited for the next album, not after their catastrophic 3rd album. But now I'm more than impatient to listen to it, because if they make it as epic and fantastic as this EP, then I believe that Rhapsody might very well deliver their best work ever. Let's hope so. In the meantime, I urge every single fan of Rhapsody (and Epic Metal) to jump right ahead on that excellent EP (even if like me you disliked Dawn Of Victory), cause you want it in your collection trust me !