RHAPSODY – The Dark Secret (EP)

The first sample from the upcoming Rhapsody album is here, and everything is just as you’d expect. The band carries on with their movie-score-spaghetti-dungeons-and-dragons-knocked-out-of-the-European-football-championships-during-the-qualifying-rounds form of Metal, and it doesn’t sound bad at all.

Christopher “Saruman” Lee has been hired as narrator this time around, and that is definitely a wise move as the ridiculously accented Italian voice they formerly used was just that, ridiculously accented. Mr. Lee actually gets to noodle around quite a bit as he has a relatively prominent role in the production, because the band seems to go for a more orchestral approach than what has been the case lately.

After a spoken intro, the track starts off bombastically, with very well produced horns and choirs. So far so good. Singer Fabio Lione’s first entry is a tad on the “aggressive” side, a bit like his work on “When Demons Awake” from The Power of the Dragonflame. I’ve never been a big fan of this vocal style, but it works okay this time. Lione really shines, however, during the more melodic parts of this track — for example, during the bridge part at 2:35.

After the first verse we’re introduced to the chorus, and herein lays my biggest concern with the track – there is no chorus! The chorus melody is in no way acceptable as a full-on Rhapsody song, maybe a bridge or middle-8, but a chorus it isn’t. Since the chorus is very important in this style of music, chorus failure sort of lets the track down quite a bit (at least to me). The rest of the song is actually pretty good, with a very nice and speedy bridge, another narrative part, and a trademark Luca Turilli-does-J. S. Bach-chamber-music guitar solo.

So all in all, it’s a good song, but far from a Rhapsody classic. I’ve still got high hopes for the new album, though, as The Power of the Dragonflame was a very good effort and a big step forward from the disappointing Dawn of Victory. “Unholy Warcry” is pretty far from being unholy, and it’s not much of a war cry, but it’s definitely a decent tune!