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When many CDs are released every day it gets harder and harder to really get impressed with a new release. Well, something like that just happened to me and a band called Felony, from Switzerland, caused it. I am not go to tell you too much about their history now, somewhere else on this site you'll find an interesting interview that I did with bassist Thomas Brogli. Lazy as I am, I let him do all the work explaining and telling us more about how this band was founded.

So now for my part of the deal, listening and reviewing their debut album that was so cleverly called 'First Works'. Already with the first tunes, an intro called 'An Introduction To', I knew this album would be a fine piece of work to sit back and relax to. I was right! In the past I used to love the Danish band Royal Hunt so much. The way they composed and mixed all fine instruments into a bigger thing gave me goose bumps. Especially their singer DC Cooper was the one that added the finishing touch. When DC Cooper left that band all went downhill with these Danes and I lost my interest. When the first real song 'What A Felony' started I knew, the old Royal Hunt was back. But with new players, from a different country and with a bunch of new songs that made me jump of my chair. Especially the way this band combines awesome and powerful instrumentation with shared vocals between a man's and a woman's voice, make this listening trip of more than one hour a very delightful job. The songs are so diverse and on every corner there is musical surprise, a turn that you would not expect but completes the whole idea of the composition. It's very special how this band divides the lead-vocals between Andreas Wildi and Andrea Richner. It even gets more special when they share some vocal lines; their voices really complement each other in this magnificent progressive music. The best tunes are 'My Way', 'Disappointed' and 'On Life's End' with some incredible bass-tricks in the intro. (Bassist Thomas told me that these were actually an idea from the keyboard-player). I have this album for about two weeks now and played it for many times already. This one will be in my year list of 2006, I am sure of that!

Score: 94/100