The Devil's Hall of Fame

When his previous band, power metal act Twilight folded, Danish keyboard player Finn Zierler embarked in a new project, aptly named Beyond Twilight to mark a sort of continuity between the two bands. In fact, Beyond Twilight begin where Twilight ended: Zierler’s new creature takes the power metal epicness of his former band and morphs it into a dark, progressive beast that may draw parallels with acts like Kamelot and Evergrey for the brooding, theatrical nature of the music on display. If you are however expecting a minor record that follows the footsteps of the aforementioned more well-known acts – think again: The Devil’s Hall of Fame is a stunning masterpiece that vastly surpasses most releases in the dark progressive/power metal genre. Here is why.

First of all, Beyond Twilight’s line-up on this release can count on one of the most formidable singers in metal: His Majesty Jørn Lande. Here at the beginning of his lustrous career, the Norwegian vocalist combines the grit and power of Ronnie James Dio with the soulful delivery of David Coverdale. His performance on The Devil’s Hall of Fame is absolutely spectacular, injecting power and feeling into beautiful vocal melodies that are catchy and instantly memorable, but never banal or boring. The rest of the lineup is also very solid. Bassist Anders Lindgren and drummer Tomas Fredén, who had already played on Twilight’s debut album, provide a reliable backbone that strikes the right balance between simple groove and intricate playing. Anders Kragh is a skilled and versatile guitarist who adapts his playing to suit the different needs of the music, from muscular no-frills riffs, to subtle melodic leads, to tricky technical passages and blazing solos (“Hellfire”). Beyond Twilight’s mastermind Finn Zierler is also a very proficient player. I particularly enjoy the wide range of keyboard sounds and samples he employs on the album, and the use he makes of the instrument – always very imaginative and inventive.

Strong musicianship counts for little without strong compositions. Fortunately, this album has both. Its eight tracks are exceptional examples of how to write keyboard-driven prog metal that is not just all technical twiddly bits and intricate songwriting, but also has feeling and depth. The intricacies of prog are certainly there, as most songs follow feature frequent tempo changes, plenty of instrumental detours, unusual melodic solutions (the suddenly uplifting second part of the chorus in “Shadowland”), and unexpected turns (the extravagant Latin choirs in the title-track and “Perfect Dark”). But each song is also cleverly anchored in excellent melodic ideas that hook you in and make the music immediately enjoyable and memorable. Credit here goes to both Zierler who composed and arranged all music, and Lande, who wrote the vocal melodies. I also dig the overall mood of the album, dark and ominous. It is a perfect match for the dystopian sci-fi concept that runs through the record, about a man who travels through the depths of his own mind and slowly loses grip with reality.

There are no dull moments on this album. Each song is a small gem, from the bleak and hyper-heavy “Godless and Wicked”, to the hard rock accessibility of “Shadowland”, to the two short, evocative instrumentals “The Devil’s Waltz” and “Closing the Circle”. My favourite songs are the title-track and the closing piece “Perfect Dark”. The former is a sprawling epic that covers a lot of ground, traversing different moods and musical styles from its doomy first part to the proggy extravaganza that explodes halfway through the second half, in a way that reminds me of Arjen A. Lucassen’s best (and heaviest) work with Ayreon and Star One. As per its title, “Perfect Dark” is a perfectly dramatic conclusion to this awesome album. Foreboding, slow and sinister, it is powered by a massive crescendo where Jørn Lande is at its absolute best.

In summary, if you are a fan of progressive metal – especially its dark, melancholic variety – you simply must listen to this album. I struggle to find things to criticize (perhaps the sound production is a bit thin), or to pinpoint better records in the genre than this. Instantly enjoyable and with great repeated listen value, The Devil’s Hall of Fame is up there with the best music of Ayreon, Evergrey, and Kamelot. Beyond Twilight will go on to record two further albums, although Mr Lande will step down from his role as vocalist after this one. It’s a pity, as his vocals clearly play a big role in making this record such a masterpiece. But the quality of the music is really high too, so I very much look forward to listening to Beyond Twilight’s other two records as well.

Formally, this is the first complete, fully pumped up album and in the same time debut, coming from the storehouse of ideas and critically highly praised danish sextet (or quintet if you look BT through the standard lineup), almost cinematically epochal and audibly sophisticated progressive metallers, Beyond Twilight (formerly known as Twilight).

"The Devil's Hall Of Fame" is the high-definition and highly atmospherical, melodic, progressive and rich conceptual record that deals with the narrative of an individual hacker whose brain has been hijacked in a microchipped dystopian society and his struggle to fulfill the answers to the questions he raised from the first day and those issues that no one or nothing could ever resolve for him. You can imaginatively comprehend it as the path of Neo before he received green fonts on his CRT screen from the Trinity, but in that sense that the character lives through the matrix interactively through his own mind, to modify his own limbo-like, "stolen" brain.

Lyrical themes are expanding from the dark all to the darkest atmospheric moods, and creatively very well explored, tightened into progressive continuum as you'd expect from the high-end out-of-the-box prog metal band. They deal with questions ranging from philosophy and religion to technocratic utopias in the Kubrick' or Wachowski brothers' sense all to the final social judgement, finishing with the psychological meanings of life and everydays mindset subjected, obedient to the demon of materialism and mental, not to mention spiritual slavery, as it's observed by the protagonist, "Bronto cyber". This is one very edifying piece of an album, and you won't experience it fully without the lyrical comprehension.

Instrumental work just supports the overall creative quality with the rich and diverse arrangements, shorter just-enough-like guitar solos very harmonic and melodic keyboards.

The lyrics, songwriting, vocal melodies, verses and harmonies are the top-notch ensured along with mainman Finn Zierler by the standard of the Norwegian vocal master, Jorn Lande, whose voice, particularly was highly hailed as his best performance to date (some even consider to THIS date) since he has already raised the vocal barrier enough high with nowadays absent progressive name of the Norwegian scene, Ark and his own solo project, JORN. His voice is raspy but again clean, rich, melodic and highly consecutive in making him define and trademark his own standard, finally becoming the vocalist whose voice nowadays is enough guarantee to record sales rise. Notably he likes using false-folds in technical support to his powerhouse, associative screams, and he's doing it over the top, naturally and convincingly.

The production itself shines in its fullest, sonic, crystal clear auditory experience that will produce another impact and digits increment to the final grade of the album. MP3 album in 320kbps feels on the surface like the LP (though it's ofc not). I won't evaluate song by song, since that I leave for the subjective perception but it's enough to say that with 1 instrumental, 1 transitional song, 6 great pieces with one of them maybe slightly weaker.

In an overall conclusion, fantastic opus and a great debut that made the name of a Jorn and the band themselves with an important message for the listeners.

My discovery of Beyond Twilight was only a result of my fascination with Kelly Carpenter's voice leading me to dig up everything I can find involving his participation. Now, the added bonus of this discovery is seeing that the beloved Jorn Lande was a part of this ensemble, for this gem: "The Devil's Hall of Fame".

Jorn Lande has, and always will be, one of my favorite metal vocalists. His raw, rough and intensely powerful voice is second to none, with only David Coverdale coming to mind. True it may be that Jorn was a fond admirer of David Coverdale (which is pretty obvious when he performs freestyle vocals, and being that he was a singer in a Whitesnake tribute band), but Jorn has now trademarked a sound in Metal that is just simply unmet by any other vocalists, and remains to be one of the most prominent and recognizable voices for Progressive/Power Metal of our time.

Contracting to Beyond Twilight for this release was a GIANT leap forward for Jorn, allowing him to express a mixture of his signature freestyle singing, as well as displaying his extremely well-trained and disciplined melodic vocals for the more tame areas of the compositions. His ability is almost fully unfolded within this release, hitting notes that I honestly didn't even know he had, and experimenting with a more bizarre style of scat singing [worded loose]; for instance, in the track "Crying".

The song-writing in this release is exquisite. There are no boundaries, no flaws, and absolutely no stagnating features. Every song is a different experience than the others, and each show a vast array of abilities in compositional skill and creativity. Not once does this album become excessive in any aspect; where it needs to be tame, the tracks remain tame, and when absurdity is required, it is met. The standard of composition is obscenely professional, setting the bar for Progressive Metal at a ridiculous height.

Beyond Twilight have opened a totally new gate to the world of Progressive Metal, and if they continue to contract the greatest singers in existence, their obscurity will be completely shattered by the monstrous fan-base that this group will SURELY acquire. Just like in the case of such bands as Anubis Gate, it is a massive disappointment that notoriety is not what these masters of metal possess, because after experiencing "The Devil's Hall of Fame", everything else seems worthless.

fucking 100/100

Beyond twilight- “the devil’s hall of fame”

This band is called “Beyond Twilight” and is a project put together by the keyboardist Finn Zierler. An earlier incarnation was called “twilight” and it apparently was changed when Jorn came on board to form “Beyond Twilight“. This band features the vocal talents of one Jorn Lande. He happens to be one of the very best newer singers in the metal field. His voice sounds to me like Ronnie James Dio crossed with David Coverdale.

The music here is wonderful “progressive epic heavy metal“. Well that’s what the sticker say from some metal magazine from Europe called “rock hard” they say “10x dynamit” so it must be true. The songs are all written by Finn with Jorn sharing writing the vocal melodies along with Finn. I think the songs are a concept suite of songs written by Finn and Jorn . The band is very good and all players are well heard in the mix. The production is done by Tommy Hansen and is crystal clear and very powerful.
I would agree with the opening description but add that it’s a more modern take on the old heavy rock/metal classics of the old halcyon days of early metal.

The majority of the songs are mid tempo to faster. One or two of them do plod along in a doomy/stoner style but they are extremely effective in the way the songs work. “Hellfire” leads things off with a bit of a vocal user computer interface dialogue that seems kind of cheesy to me. Once that is over we get crowd “cheering” , now I don’t know if they meant this to happen this way but it almost sounds like the crowd is cheering the ending of the vocal intro bit. The song is a slower Sabbathy riff based tune that has a keyboard motif that is like doubled over the slow beat and groove. A scorching guitar solo by Anders Kragh almost seems out of place but it becomes the perfect climax and the lead in to the slow methodical /hypnotic synths on the outro and ending. Jorn’s vocals here are tremendous. The chorus is very good and I know over time I will be humming “Hellfire“.

The song called “Shadowland” is very good and features lots of organs just riffing and jamming away. One of the high points of this album.

The title song, “the devils hall of fame” is one of the great songs on this disc. The arrangements here are very cool. It has some vocal choir bits that trade off with Jorn on a kind of call and response in the verses. This is very slow but has an excellent breakdown and change that is awesome. The choir does “ooohs and aaaahs” while Jorn sings about “souls turning to black”, very cool imagery. Later the choir has some bits in Latin from the bible while Jorn sings more about the people/souls in the hall of fame. After the Latin vocals then there is a very nice guitar solo as the song slows and fades.

So musically its like a modern heavy metal classic but featuring more keyboards and synthesizers instead of the normal guitars. I prefer guitars to keyboards but in this case it works well. The guitarist, Anders, is there but only solos occasionally when called upon and is very effective on the songs he plays on. The songs are all very good to excellent heavy rock with very good vocal melodies by Jorn and Finn. The production is updated with the bass and drums being well represented in the mix. I could call this a modern metal masterpiece but that is a superlative that is over used nowadays So instead I will say it is a great piece of doomy/gothic heavy metal with superb vocals and good instrumental interplay.