Labÿrinth - Return to Heaven Denied (1998)^{Release ID: 3624}

Italy is just as essential to modern power metal as America or Germany.  Let's keep in mind that there are three power metal songs the world loves to emulate, usually the first three that comes up when you google "power metal songs": "Through the Fire and the Flames" by Dragonforce, "Mirror Mirror" by Blind Guardian and "Emerald Sword" by Rhapsody.  Now Rhapsody redefined symphonic power metal with their metal operas, but that doesn't mean that's the only kind of power metal worth looking into.  Before Rhapsody, there was Labyrinth, and before "Emerald Sword," there was Return to Heaven Denied, an album with a focus on perfecting the tropes of contemporary power metal, and it succeeds in every way.  The problem is simple: they aren't popular enough in AMerica to talk about...

Depending on whichever effects and instruments they use, RtHD displays Labyrinth's signature sound faintly switching from typical power metal to light sci-fi to light fantasy.  The many elements that contribute to the album are never quite overused, so you get the full power metal experience without any serious risk taken.  On top of that, the album is quite heavy.  "New Horizon" is an excellent example of just how rough and nasty their guitars can sound, despite the fact that their primary focus is atmosphere and melody.  And "The Night of Dreams" is an example of how the album can switch its focus on different types of metal without losing consistency.  It's easily more recognizable as a prog metal ballad in the style of Dream Theater than straightforward power metal.  Neoclassical organs, synth effects and violins can take over in focus without a direct genre-switch, and it can get to the point where a song can simply focus on beauty and an aquatic/heavenly feeling like "Lady Lost in Time" before coming back at you with the heavy power metal.  And the act of drawing songs out is rare on this album, despite the obvious progressive behavior in several songs.  And because these extre-stylistic elements are used lightly, it feels almost as easy going as Sonata Arctica made it out to be on Silence.  And sometimes we have songs that focus almost purely on heaviness, but still have room for neoclassical melody, like "Thunder."

I'm not sure I'd call this a perfect album since i8t doesn't really offer anything "new" or "original."  But it offers some of the best of the power metal tropes that had been around at that time.  In some ways, this album is better than Helloween's Keeper of the Seven Keys, Pt. II, but I'd still say it's a worse album because that Helloween album practically cemented power metal perfection during its earliest stages, and Return to Heaven Denied simply perfected the common tropes.  But still, the album is more consistent in the sense that each song is largely maintaining a 95/100 average.  It's worth noting that Labyrinth doesn't have the skill to top the best songs on Keeper Pt. II, but if I were to select a top five power metal album starter set for noobs, Helloween's aforementioned album would be the first, and this would be the second in the pack