WILDERUN: Veil Of Imagination (PROGRESSIVE METAL): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

It happens sometimes. The Music Waves editors' Top 5 of the year is wrapped up, then comes out a little late with an album that would have deserved to be in the Top 5. Because this album is a musical slap in the face like we rarely get. Moreover, to be quite frank, it's the band itself that passed under our radars without the slightest echo, even furtive. Yet "Veil Of Imagination" is already the third album of the Bostonians whose career really started in 2012, even if the band was founded in 2008 by singer and guitarist Evan Berry.

One of the reasons for Wilderun's lack of exposure is undoubtedly the claimed folk metal label that has stuck to their music since the beginning. In the genre, with the exception of Agalloch, few bands have managed to cross the Atlantic to compete with their European counterparts. But over the years, the Americans' music has evolved a lot and if some traces of folk metal remain here and there in some of the compositions of "Veil Of Imagination", this new album is above all a little progressive and melodic death metal jewel with very eclectic influences, going from Turisas to the first period of Opeth, passing by Fleshgod Apocalypse for the symphonic aspect and Devin Townsend for the cinematographic construction of the whole.

"Veil Of Imagination" can be listened to as a symphony in three movements, of breathtaking richness and beauty. The first movement, consisting of the titles 'The Unimaginable Zero Summer', 'O Resolution!' and 'Sleeping Ambassadors Of The Sun', is a succession of bravery moments, alternating between clear vocals and deep growls and brilliant transitions between symphonic passages and Dantesque death metal riffs. Wilderun shows an impressive ability to marry power and melody without ever losing the listener. Each composition has been conceived as the soundtrack to a grandiose epic film and the orchestral component of the band's music is perfectly balanced to avoid the grandiloquent and pompous.

The second movement ('Scentless Core (Budding)', 'Far From Where Dreams Unfurl', 'Scentless Core (Fading)') is the one where Wilderun's folk metal roots are at their strongest, where acoustic guitars are mixed with piano arpeggios, an instrument omnipresent throughout the album, where the emphasis becomes darker, before leading to the third Dantestic movement of this symphony from another world. The enormous 'The Tyranny Of Imagination' with its Opethian riff and the symphonic 'When The Fire And The Rose Were One' (a nod to T.S. Eliot's poem) and its grandiose finale bring to a close a work that is remarkable and surprisingly masterful in every way, with a fascinating complex beauty.

"Veil Of Imagination" is a death metal nugget, progressive, symphonic and melodic. Precision of the arrangements, richness of the compositions, diversity of the musical ambiances borrowed from the great film music composers like Alan Silvestri or John Williams, everything contributes to propel Wilderun in the court of the greatest and to make this album a future classic of the genre. Awesome! - Official website

WILDERUN

VEIL OF IMAGINATION

AUTRE LABEL

PROGRESSIVE METAL