vote
6.0
- Band:
Fairyland - Duration: 01:05:07
- Available since: 13/06/2025
- Label:
-
Frontiers
The date of October 21, 2022 shocked many fans of the symphonic Power Metal: that day, in fact, the news of the death of Phil Giordana, only forty -four years old, confirmed by the official Fairyland page, arrived.
Nobody, after the event that happened, would have expected a new album signed by the French band, but today here is “The Story Remains”, a new full-length published by our frontiers: Willdic Lievin, founding member, has loaded a great responsibility on his shoulders, deciding to carry on the music of Fairyland even without their songwriter and historical leader.
Will he and the new components have been able to not make Phil's compositional inspiration regret too much? What is certain is that the group decided to conclude what had been started; In fact, Giordana left a lot of material, still in the embryonic state, on which the new training had to work hard to carry it out.
The fifth disc of the French band is a discreet example of symphonic power metal for which, given the absence of the keyboard player and Jordanian leader, we would have expected a less pompous and more direct sound: anything else, here the baroque arrangements are majestic and are inserted imposingly in each of the compositions. This is immediately perceptible by listening to the short – someone would say useless – introduction, and becomes even more evident immediately after with the kinematic impact of “To Stars and Beyond”, followed closely by the sent “Karma”, with a mountain of orchestrations, almost exaggerated since Cherischiano in many points to cover the other tools.
Another not too convincing aspect concerns the new singer, the English Archie Caine, replacing Francesco Cavalieri (Wind Rose), and which is a little too monocordic and not very expressive. In general, the vocal lines that meet during the tracklist are a little cold, partly also of a production that sounds too synthetic and artificial, standing more the symphonic side.
In short, there are many aspects that do not convince in this new Fairyland work, but we must also recognize the band the ability to compose majestic songs, which certainly have requested a great job in terms of writing.
The moments we have most appreciated come with “A New Dawn”, refined Midtempo embellished with breath instruments – where, however, here too, the personality of the singer is missing – the dynamic “Unity”, with the presence of many different elements including female voices, choirs and acoustic guitars, and the powerful “suffering acts” which closes the disc with decision and the presence of Elisa Martin (ex Martin. Moor), who, with his powerful voice, would have really benefited the entire album.
It is nice to find the fairies, but “The Story Remains” is lost too much on sumptuous arrangements and baroque orchestrations, forgetting the true essence of the songs a little on the street.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
