Band:	Luca Turilli
Album:	King Of The Nordic Twilight
Style:	Symphonic power metal
Release date:	1999
Guest review by:	Joey Jo Jo

01. To Magic Horizons
02. Black Dragon
03. Legend Of Steel
04. Lord Of The Winter Snow
05. Princess Aurora
06. The Ancient Forest Of Elves
07. Throne Of Ice
08. Where Heroes Lie
09. Warrior's Pride
10. Kings Of The Nordic Twilight

An "artist" will usually take a break from his musical group to make a side project due to creative restrictions in the group. Luca Turilli is this "artist". After all he only writes all of Rhapsody's music and lyrics, besides the orchestration. King Of The Nordic Twilight was recorded after Symphony of Enchanted Lands was released to huge fanfare. Being a Rhapsody fan my expectations were pretty high for this album. You would think it would be something completely different and grand if he needed a creative departure. Instead you get a heavy dose of what seems like computer generated music. This album is made out of generic power metal formulas that would be used by Hammerfall, or Dragonforce even. The synths are used to generate your run-of-the-mill power metal atmosphere. The orchestration happens to take the same road. If you think that being the neoclassical virtuoso that Luca is, there would be some excellent guitar work normally not found in Rhapsody, think again. His guitar work is very watered down and his solos are half assed and uninspired.

The songs are driven by the usual epic power metal formula that plagues the later Rhapsody albums from "Dawn of Victory" on. This release is only a hint of Rhapsody's decline in quality. While I can't bother going through the track listing since all the songs suffer from the same nauseous repetition, "Lord of the Winter" is pretty interesting and I have certainly not heard anything else like this in power metal. With its techno-like synth lines carrying the song making it stand out, it still lacks anything to actually hold it together as an above-average quality song. Besides vocalist Olaf Hayer ripping off Michael Kiske from the Hello-keeper days to a perfect T, that happens to be the only positive thing that can be said about King of the Nordic Twilight. This shows that all Luca wanted to accomplish is to whore out his name, and stretch out his ego as he does his physic on stage during shows (so I hear). This has to be the worst melodic metal album since War to End All Wars by the original sweeping maestro himself. Now I know the absolute lowest point in music. I doubt anything in the future can be this bad or surprising, not even if Edguy frontman Tobias Sammet makes some kind of metal opera staring big names of the genre playing over the top of overplayed power metal?.oh wait?.