Xandria – Theater of Dimensions (2017)

Fully exploiting the band’s newfound strengths around singer Dianne van Giersbergen, Xandria delivers one of the best Symphonic/Gothic Metal albums of the last few months with “Theater of Dimensions”. Crafting over 74 minutes of lush and bombastic songs, the band reaches the levels of excellence of bands like Epica, Within Temptation and Nightwish with this killer release filled with epic melodies and mesmerizing arrangements.

Opening with the very dramatic and engaging “Where the Heart is Home”, we instantly get a superbly epic vibe thanks to the vocal arrangements and over the top orchestrations. The band quickly showcases their very diverse musical style while going through excellent songs like “Death to the Holy”, “Forsaken Love” and “Call of Destiny”, all of them showing influences from everything ranging from Power Metal to Folk Metal, but with the distinctive Xandria edge.

The versatility of the songs in this album is something that makes the release quite unique and unpredictable as we can hear in the change between the very heavy “We are Murderers (We all)” and the power ballad “Dark Night of The Soul”. With all kinds of different elements added to individual songs, tracks like “Ship of Doom” have that certain Xandria magic perfectly paired with guest appearances of in this case Ross Thompson of Van Canto fame.

Saving the two best songs for last, “Queen of Hearts Reborn” keeps things dark and mysterious while “A Theater of Dimensions” delivers an epic 14 minutes of music featuring guest appearances of Joost van den Broek and Henning Basse. Overall, the band shows great improvement over their past releases and manages to craft one of the most epic and bombastic releases we have heard in a while. If you liked Xandria before, this album will make you love them forever.

Label: Napalm Records

Release: January 27th, 2017

Genre: Symphonic/Gothic Metal

Country: Germany