Beyond Twilight — The Devil’s Hall Of Fame

Conceptalbums! I’m sure this term makes some people cringe! Beyond Twilight’s debut album is a tale about a man hacking his way through time and his own brain through a computer. This story is accompanied by a hybrid of melodic metal and progressive rock in a nearly ‘doom’ fashion.

The pan-Scandinavian band Beyond Twilight can be seen as a continuance of Twilight, a band formed by keyboard-player and composer Finn Zierler. Finn composed The Devil’s Hall Of Fame whilst cruising the Sahara with no instruments at hand. This explains the strong melodies and excellent arrangements on the album I think, because everything had to be remembered and written down by Finn before he got a chance to hear it played. Although all the musicians are proficient at their instruments, they are playing in favour of the music.

Now besides strong songmaterial, this band also happens to have a certain singer named Jørn Lande (ARK, Millennium, Jorn, Mundanus Imperium, to name a few) in the band. This means they have the best metal-voice of our time! By adding his vocal thunder to this music a metalmonster is born! Sometimes screaming his lungs out, other times more introspective and even dubbed up ’till 250 times to form monstrous chorales, Jørn makes this album a living hell for my neighbours. The first month I had The Devil’s Hall Of Fame I played it at least once a day, and loud!

The album kicks off with the stately, but desperate Hellfire. A scream to be delivered from sadness and pain. In the more up-tempo Godless And Wicked the main character is trying to break out of his bad situation. He enters the Shadowland, again a slow, doomy track, but more comfortable but still searching and longing. The instrumental The Devil’s Waltz, things are getting less comfortable. Jørn croons his way through the verses of Crying like David Coverdale (Whitesnake) and screams his heart out, longing for the girl of his dreams. Enter the titletrack: The Devil’s Hall Of Fame. This spooky, dragging and slow monstertrack builds up to a dramatic end, with huge Latin choirs. A dreamy and instrumental Closing Of The Circle follows. Eventually he resigns to his fate in the Perfect Dark and the album comes to a bombastic end.

It may come as no surprise this album gets the full 5 kudo’s, if possible, I’d give even 6! For the new album they have wild plans like writing songs under water. I’m seriously hoping for a tour as well.