Artist: Fairyland 
   Title: Score To A New Beginning
   Label: Napalm Records

With a name like Fairyland and an album cover featuring warrior-like men locked in an epic battle with mythical creatures, you pretty much know what you’re going to get – symphonic and grandiose songs, heavy on the keyboards with lightning-fast guitar work and epic choruses are the order of business here and like many symphonic/prog metal bands, Fairyland centers around one man’s vision for the music and in this case it’s keyboardist Philippe Giordana. 

Like Arjen Lucassen (Aryeon), Jon Olivia (Jon Olivia’s Pain) or Tuomas Holopainen (Nightwish), everything is created by one man and the band is less of a band and more of a ‘project’ and on ‘Score To A New Beginning’ a series of guest vocalists and musicians are employed to bring Giordana’s vision to life.

This album is the final in a trilogy of albums telling the story of mythical land Osyrhia and its characters after ‘Of Wars in Osyrhia’ (2006) and ‘The Fall of an Empire’ (2006). And much like their previous efforts, Fairyland have created an album that is definitely not for the I-Pod generation – the point of records like this is not to cherry pick and isolate individual songs but rather to absorb the album in full and follow its story from beginning to end, much like a film (and as if to emphasize this point even further, the intro and outro are re-named ‘Opening Credits’ and ‘End Credits’). 

Giordana has picked some fine guest musicians for this project and there is no doubting the quality of the talent on show here, particularly his choice of vocalists, who perfectly accentuate the passion of the songs, including a guest appearance from Georg Neuhaser of rising power-metallers Serenity.

Fans of Blind Guardian, Rhapsody of Fire, Ayreon, etc should definitely check Fairyland out as there will no doubt be much to like here but they’re unlikely to gain many casual fans with such an ambitious project.

Best Track – ‘A Soldier’s Letter’ 

Review by: Adam G

Tracklisting:

1. Opening Credits
2. Across The Endless Sea (part II)
3. Assault On The Shore
4. Master Of The Waves
5. A Soldiers Letter
6. Godsent
7. At The Gates Of Morken
8. Rise Of The Giants
9. Score To A New Beginning
10.End Credits

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