Band:	Dornfall
Album:	Précieux Secret
Style:	Progressive metal
Release date:	May 2007

01. Bastet
02. Vertige Insensé
03. 300
04. Sans Regret
05. Hypathie
06. Endiablé
07. Perdre La tête
08. Sibylline
09. L'Aveugle Et La Chose
10. Précieux Secret

When I listen to an album I like to be surprised and if unfortunately it's extremely rare nowadays to buy Metal CDs which are a bit original, with Dornfall that's really different. The first album of the French combo ("Dornfall") was already promising and even if it was a lot more "classic" than their new one "Précieux Secret", obviously it was already easy to see that Dorfnall is a band which plays an original music. "Précieux Secret" confirms this feeling, the band from Paris is still able to surprise us and their second album is a nice piece of music.

It's really hard to classify the music of Dornfall, seriously it's unique but if you really need some "words" I think that I should talk about Progressive music first. Progressive because all the songs are long and complex with a ton of breaks, variations, changes of tonality and except with two or three tracks maybe, the length of the songs is long and that's right, it's not so easy of access. But Dornfall wrote songs which are not linear and plus we have a lot of influences in this release. It can be dark and melancholic a la Katatonia ("300"), or heavier and not so far away of extreme music ("Bastet") but also a bit more "pop" ("Sans Regret"). It's varied as you can understand and that's the force of "Précieux Secret", this album maybe goes in a dozen of directions but it's never boring and always surprising and catchy, song after song?

Précieux Secret" can be a bit hard of access. But with time, (really listen to this album again and again if you really want to understand it) it will become different and I'm quite sure that you'll enjoy it a lot. At the beginning I even have to confess that it was not easy for me to listen to the CD but now I listen to it everyday. Musically speaking nothing to say, the performance of the musicians is really good and the voice of Stéphane Molino is near of the perfection but you have to know that the lyrics are in French and maybe that it will be problematic for the ones who don't understand this language. I hope that it will not be like a wall for you and anyway trust me, the lyrics are really good, well written and with some nice topics which are in general really poetic.

For the production? nothing to say one more time. First, the cover is perfect and that's funny to know that the guy who designed it works in general with Hip-Hop artists? Also if the sound was the bad point of the first album, the guys knew how to fix this problem and found the way to record and perfectly mix this album in their own studios! It's really impressive and sounds like a big production so let's hope that that a lot of other French bands will want to work with the Dornfall's team, it could be a good idea.

"Précieux Secret" is the confirmation that Dornfall is a talented band but it's above all a good album of original and atypical Metal. If you're a bit open-minded and like originality I think that you should try this record. Remember though, this release is not so easy of access (this is its only problem actually) so take your time to discover it and it should be ok. "Précieux Secret" is a really nice album, one of the best releases of the French Metal scene in 2007.