No artist credited (let us know!)
Style: Power metal, progressive metal (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Angra, Symphony X, (Luca Turilli/Lione’s) Rhapsody (Of Fire)
Country: Italy
Release date: 24 January 2025
If you happen to be in Tuscany, for all its cultural delights, between the yearly Battle of the Bridge event in Pisa, lampredotto panini by the duomo in Florence, and the bottomless glasses of Brunello and Montepulciano in its many hillside vineyards, I urge you to take a moment and revel in your surroundings. If you listen carefully, there, echoing from the rolling marble hills of the Apuan Alps, you can hear the faint sounds of power metal as Massa’s Labÿrinth gears up to release their 10th album In The Vanishing Echoes of Goodbye. A high-octane output of progressive, melodic power metal, this no-holds-barred release contains all of the hallmarks of what made this band a staple of the Italian metal scene: virtuosic riffing, high-altitude soaring vocal acrobatics, and machine-gun drumming packaged in creative arrangements and intelligent songwriting.
The album opens on “Welcome Twilight”, which comes to life with a doomy, heavy riff and floor tom groove, modulating into a gallop where a labyrinthine keyboard/guitar arpeggio twists and turns above. Settling into a double-time feel, guitar maestro Olaf Thörsen’s high-speed precision picking then sets the backdrop for Roberto Tiranti’s expressive vocals. The epic chorus kicks in with dramatic Latin chanting and a memorable hook while the rhythm section keeps a breakneck pace. I have to imagine that seeing these guys live with the strobe lights going while drummer Matt Peruzzi employs his rapid-fire kick bursts would send anyone into an epileptic fit. The guy keeps a pace that would make Aquiles Priester (Edu Falaschi) sweat.
There’s a technicality here typical of the genre, but In the Vanishing Echoes of Goodbye also showcases more of a heavier side of Labÿrinth with “Heading To Nowhere”, a track that features some clear thrash influence and a riff that wouldn’t feel amiss on an Annihilator disc, and “Accept The Changes” which begins with a minor-key lick and a dark, broody symphonic metal element – but also some decidedly 80s AOR sensibilities with “Out Of Place” and “The Right Side Of This World”: anthemic sing-along choruses and Bon Jovi-esque synth stabs aplenty. “The Healing” presents one of the album’s two power ballads, and it’s brilliantly produced, exhibiting emotional acoustic guitar with excellent cymbal work atop, a hard-hitting sorrowful chorus and tasteful fadeout. The second one, “To The Son I Never Had” is an evocative narrative piece of life advice from a man to his ostensibly hypothetical son; it’s well executed and a more mellow, sentimental, zippo-lighters-swaying-in-the-air type of ballad with only a slight deviation into a hard rocking interlude about 2/3rds of the way through for an inspirational guitar solo.
The production on this album is massive. Each snare hit resonates through your cranial cavity as the kick drums send mighty pressure waves through your chest. The track listing is purposeful and most songs stand out with increasingly catchy refrains and the oft-featured instantly appealing twin-guitar melodies in true Iron Maiden fashion. The lyrical work is often introspective but sometimes turns outwards to society at large; however, the band struggles to find a way to address it in a manner that avoids coming off as trite. Labÿrinth stated that the record was inspired by the worldwide political turmoil brought about in the wake of the recent pandemic. This latter element is addressed haphazardly in the track “Mass Distraction” where a verse about misinformation includes the line “I recognize bullshit from a thousand miles away” – and “Inhuman Race”, where a clumsily-added, newsroom voiceover about an American “specialized combat vehicle” supplied to Ukraine and captured by Russia during the ongoing war, remarks on its potential consequences over tinkly piano and saccharine falsetto vocalization. It was such a jarring inclusion that I couldn’t help but burst into laughter. It doesn’t match the tone of the track, let alone the album. And it’s such a hamfisted way of bringing up geopolitics on an album that has mostly been about individual passion and personal life experience. But I digress.
Labÿrinth are masters of their art, no doubt about that, and the consummate musicianship of every member is on full display. The compositions are fun and varied, and feature lots of different influences from RATT to Queensrÿche and in between. The self-styled pioneers of Italian prog-power have little and less to apologize for on this release. Far be it from me to tell an artist to keep their noses out of geopolitics or epistemology, but I think there are ways to approach these subjects without falling into the classic pitfalls of banal metaphors or smacking the audience on the head with the point you’re trying to make. Then again, media literacy is becoming scarcer by the day. In The Vanishing Echoes Of Goodbye is an unrelenting and uncompromising release jam-packed with anthemic choruses and hair-raising guitar leads, proving once again why Labÿrinth are principal players in Tuscany, and in the Italian metal scene at large.
Recommended tracks: “Welcome Twilight”, “Heading To Nowhere”, “The Right Side Of This World”
You may also like: Vision Divine, DGM, Michele Luppi’s Los Angeles
Final verdict: 8.5/10
Related links: Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page
Label: Frontiers Records – | Facebook | Official Website
Labÿrinth is:
– Roberto Tiranti (vocals)
– Olaf Thörsen (guitars)
– Andrea Cantarelli (guitars)
– Nick Mazzucconi (bass)
– Matt Peruzzi (drums)
– Oleg Smirnoff (keyboards)
