Band:	Lanfear
Album:	X To The Power Of Ten
Style:	Power metal, Progressive metal
Release date:	August 22, 2008
A review by:	Jeff

01. Enter Dystopia
02. My Will Be Done
03. Decryption
04. Brave New Men
05. The Question Keeper
06. Synaptogenesis
07. Jugglin' At The Edge
08. Just Another Broken Shell
09. A Twin Phenomenon
10. The Art Of Being Alone
11. Seeds Of The Plague

Nobody has ever talked a lot about the German band Lanfear. This is a bit unfair actually because this Metal act is really good and should receive some better promotion. With the quality of their new album "X To The Power Of Ten", things will maybe change and I hope that you'll not miss them anymore. "X To The Power Of Ten" is highly recommended to all the people who like aggressive and progressive Power Metal.

Lanfear music is not particularly revolutionary but the band has a lot of good things in their songs. First even if they're labeled as a Power Metal combo, Lanfear plays something aggressive and thrashy and you just have to listen to "My Will Be Done" to understand that you'll never be in front of trendy Euro "Flower" Power Metal. The sound of Lanfear is fast, aggressive with big blasts and a lot of rhythm. But the force of the music of the combo comes from the really big Progressive Metal influences that we can find in all the songs. A bit like with Evergrey, you will find a lot of Keyboards arrangements (which can clearly be electronics) and a lot of technical guitars and keyboards soli. "X To The Power Of Ten" is really technical but easy of access nonetheless, it's a bit like if you were in front of the Progressive side of Rage. Really this release is interesting, the songs are catchy, maybe not so deep than with bands like Pain Of Salvation or Shadow Gallery, but at least we have big riffs to counterbalance this lack of craziness. And anyway Lanfear is also a Power Metal band and not a pure Progressive combo so?

The album is full of good songs but we can still find mellow boring tracks like "The Question Keeper" which can be a bad break in the progression of the album. Though they're not a lot and despite this little problem of inequality in the track-list, everything is correct here, from the recording to the performance of the musicians which is really solid. I didn't know Nuno Miguel de Barros Fernandes before today but let's be honest this guy is a good singer and that's great for Lanfear to have such a classy vocalist.

If you want to discover a good Power Metal combo, "X To The Power Of Ten" can be a good choice. The German combo releases a nice album which will be attractive for the Prog geeks like the Power-metalheads. "X To The Power Of Ten" is not the revolution of the century but this is one of the solid releases of the year 2008. Let's hope that the band will be able to continue to walk on this road.