| Running at under 2.5 minutes, this track leaves you breathlessly gasping for more, where there is no more. This instrumental/orchestral composition is the apotheosis of progressive orchestral rock, and outshines everything the Parsons/Powell team has done in the past or since. Except for its brevity, it is musical perfection. As it opens with the fainest whisper of winds, you reach to turn up the volume. Then, with little warning, the dramatic opening salvo catapults you immediately into the center of a medieval courtyard as an army of bannered knights rides out to epic battle. As the crescendo draws on, dragons blanket the sky in formation overhead from the distant mountains, preparing to wreak vengeance upon the silver-shaded man-creatures. You can see the knight armies steeling themselves for the pitch of inevitable carnage. Then, the swelling increases until the pressure can no longer be held, and the battle explodes in the apocalyptic incandescence of Ian Bairnson's electric guitar. The battle rages and doom seems inevitable, but then the guitars are silenced in the mind-altering wizardry of symphonic genocide, giving us hope that the knights will be victorious. As the final lashes of the electric dragon flames are emblazoned across your senses, you can taste the conclusion of this battle -- a prologue of the bittersweet. In the end, the remnants of the knight army claim their dubious victory in the brief skirmish, loudly and insanely celebratory, but oh, what a price to pay...
- Brian Kastel |
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