Review by SilentScream213 for Lost Horizon - A Flame to the Ground Beneath (2003)

Lost Horizon are quite universally beloved for emerging onto the Progressive Power Metal scene, dropping two masterpieces in the genre within two years, and then hanging up their gloves. More realistically, they’ve been inconsistently active, with sparse announcements but no actual releases since.

Just like their first album, “A Flame to the Ground Beneath” is more of their technical, dense, maximalist Progressive Power Metal, with influences of Heavy Metal and Symphonic Metal throughout. It’s hard to praise any singular aspect of the music, because the band pretty much excel in every area, from every single instrument played, to the vocals and melodies, to the songwriting, technique, etc…

And they manage to do all that without making the music sound soulless. Quite the opposite, as Ethereal Magnanimus has some of the most powerful and passionate vocals ever, and lays down some incredibly triumphant vocal lines. The music melodies never once stop evoking “epic” and carry with them an encouraging wind of spiritual power. This may be technical progressive music, but it’s also music that makes your very essence brim with power.

And then, of course, I was hit with the meme moment. I had no idea it was coming. Blows my mind to think I had heard Lost Horizon probably almost 2 decades ago, before I was even into Metal on some random Youtube Poop. That technically makes Lost horizon one of the first Metal bands I ever heard.

Unfortunately, this sophomore album suffers from the exact same issue as the debut. There are 9 tracks here… and 3 of them are interludes. “The Song of Earth” is nice, but the others are boring, useless, and way too long. That really detracts from the full album. I cannot fathom why bands do this…

I did also notice that the album wasn’t actually that fast for Power Metal. There aren’t any moments of Speed Metal-style pounding double bass or tremolo picking. For me, that’s a negative, because that’s one of my favorite things to hear.

As amazing and majestic as the album is, I do find it… overrated. I can completely understand the praise, and by and large, it is deserving of said honor. But me personally? Well… there are many, many Power Metal albums I would rather listen to than this one. Though that’s less of a knock against this album as it is a declaration of how much I adore Power Metal.