Artist: Insania
   Title: Agony - Gift Of Life
   Label: Black Lodge

'Agony - Gift of Life' is the fourth and probably the best album to date from Power Metallers Insania.  The band haven’t been without their share of problems since their formation back in 1992, with three founding members leaving in 2003, but this seemed to strengthen the reserve of remaining members, vocalist Ola Halén and drummer and founding member Mikko Korsbäck as they brought in new blood guitarist Peter Östros, bassist Tomas Stolt and completing the line-up Demitri Keiski on keyboards, this new line-up forged a stronger alliance that saw fruit with the first album together the stunning ‘Agony – Gift of Life’.

The album itself is pure Power Metal in its purest form with Halén’s outstanding vocals and Östros’s streaming guitars and the virtuoso keyboards of Keiski bringing a new flamboyancy to the bands overall sound, this is all backed by the pounding rhythm section of Korsbäck and Stolt.

The album opens up with the intro ‘Agony’ which leads nicely into the album proper with ‘Facing My Destiny’, a rampaging mix of heady drums and keys with Östros’s shredding guitars and with Halen giving his all from the off, this really get the blood racing and is superb way to get things underway.

The same high quality is continued on with the next track ‘Hope’, another full on Power Metal assault with Korsback leading the way with some enthused drumming and Halén’s soaring vocals.

You might think that things are about to slow down as the first few chords of ‘To Live Another Day’ play out, but this is short lived as the tempestuous pace continues with Halén giving one of his finest vocal performances of the entire album on this one.

Track of the album for me has to be the fantastic ‘Gift of Life’, this is power metal at its grandiose best, with thunderous rhythms and huge elevated keyboards and a guitarist who can bring speed and melody to a track without losing any of its grace and splendour.  A powerful statement of how the band have evolved into a force to be reckoned with.

A track where Östros really comes into his own is ‘One Day’, a more mellower song that what has gone before on the album and which once again shows Halen’s vocal prowess as he powers through the song with ease.  This combined with Ostros’s towering guitars show the band can bring it down without losing any of the previous tracks splendour.

If you think after ‘One Day’ the band would slow things down for the remainder of the album then you would be sorely mistaken, as things get even more driven and riff enthused as things continue with ‘Fight For Life’, the fastest track on the album so far with Korsbäck’s thrashing away on the skins with Stolt equal to it with a thunderous bass section and Östros’s shredding like his life depended on it.  A real head-bangers delight.

Another of my favourite tracks on the album (and there are many) is the superb ‘Valley of Sunlight’ as Halén reached new heights vocally and the rest of the band excel with some fantastic keys by Keiski and the relentless back beat of Stolt and Korsbäck acting as backbone to the track, with Östros showing why they only needed him to replace the two previous guitar players in the band with some quite outstanding licks.

What power metal album wouldn’t be complete without an epic and this album is no different as at 8 minutes 21 seconds long ‘Times of Glory’ is the longest track on the album and worthy of the term epic.  As it opens with Keiski’s keyboards and Korsbäck drums leading the way for Stolt and Östros, who are joined by Halen in this monstrous harmony driven masterpiece.

The band turn up the heat once more with another power driven track this time ‘Dreams’, with those now familiar back beat of thunderous drums and bass and Östros’s and Keiski’s flamboyant guitars and keyboards, this leads again into the more mellow tones of ‘Times Passes By’, a song that will surely get all those lighters out when played live.

The album closes as it opened with a master-class in power driven power metal with the guitar laden ‘Alive’, which rounds off a superb return by the band who have put all their problems behind them and come out fighting with a statement that Insania are back and stronger than ever.

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