FLAMES OF ETERNITY (DIGIPAK)

The 12 songs on this album take you on an intense ride through all different kinds of human emotions. The music covers a wide range of atmospheres; there are heavy and aggressive tracks like quot;Fear Is An Illusionquot; up-tempo rockers such as quot;Unspoken Wordsquot; or the intense and powerful quot;My Guardian Angelquot; that almost comes with an industrial vibe right next to the all orchestral ballad quot;Beauty Withinquot; or the intimate piano song quot;A Crying Heart In the center of the album stands a power ballad of haunting beauty named quot;Invisible Tearsquot; which might easily be one of the best Imperia tracks ever. The band is operating in unchanged line-up for almost 15 years already and you notice right away that you are listening to a band where the musicians know each other inside out. Their ultra-tight and energetic performance lays the stage for Helena s amazing voice that covers the whole range from soft and sensitive to powerful and aggressive dramatic or operatic to even grunt vocals at timesThe overall tone of the new album is probably a bit more positive than on the previous albums. Writing music or lyrics is like taking snapshots of an author s/composer s life in a particular moment of their life so the vibe changes as life changes as wellStill Imperia have a very distinctive style and sound of their own and when Helena sings the first note you ll know right away which band you re listening to. The original Imperia guitarist John Stam makes a guest appearance on quot;Unspoken Wordsquot; and Finnish violin virtuoso Henrik Perelló contributes an amazing performance to quot;The Oceanquot; and quot;Invisible Tearsquot. The beautiful artwork is of course coming from the capable hands of Jan Yrlund himself again. All of this makes quot;Flames Of Eternityquot; an extremely strong and intense album that will leave no Imperia fan disappointed and will very likely win them a lot of new fans along the way. Jan Yrlund commentsquot;The new album Flames Of Eternity turned out to be a very varied album. It has a heavy and guitar-oriented sound but at the same time it s very melodic operatic and has a lot of symphonic moments on it. The recording process took place in several locations across Europe. We decided to change the scenery a bit. In the past we ve always used the same studio in Germany for the recordings but this time we travelled with our drummer Steve Wolz to Fantom Studio located close to Tampere in Finland. A top-notch recording facility with Samu Oittinen and his expertise on recording metal drums. The guitars were tracked in Finland and the bass by Gerry Verstreken in Belgium while the vocals and orchestra were recorded in Germany by our long-term friend and collaborator Oliver Philipps who also appears as a guest singer on quot;Beauty Withinquot. The orchestra for quot;Fear Is An Illusionquot; was contributed by Audun Gronnestad in Norway. We are also really happy to get Jacob Hansen on board again for the mix and the mastering. He mixed our 2011 album Secret Passion and Flames Of Eternity just asked for his magical touch.