Instanzia – Ghosts (2010)

Also from Metalodic records, today we have Instanzia and their highly impressive debut album “Ghosts”. The band crafts their sound with very solid guitar riffing, majestic orchestrations and superb vocal arrangements that make most bands debut albums pale in comparison to “Ghosts”. However, a small warning comes with such an ambitious production: will the band be able to ever play it live with the same quality?

Since the very enthusiastic intro “Omen”, the band quickly builds up momentum in the same vein as Edguy, Avantasia, Pagan’s Mind, etc. With “Ghosts of the Past”, the band will immediately grab your attention with their fast-paced riffing, tight drumming and very impressive vocal arrangements. The band used three different singers to create a very powerful choir that greatly improves the band’s chorus sections giving them a very massive and majestic sound, but makes us weary on how this band will sound in reality when they don’t have all this studio magic behind them.

Most of the band’s songs follow the same structures as traditional Symphonic Power Metal bands do, relying much on their massive orchestrations and choir sections. The riffing is very good and diverse, and the solos are very nicely worked into the songs, never sounding pretentious or over exaggerated. The production on “Ghosts” is also extremely good, allowing the band to sound like a million dollars thanks to a very well balanced mix.

The ‘first half’ of the album (tracks 1 through 4) seems to be the ‘faster paced’ section of “Ghosts”, leaving the most ambitious and (our favorite) longer and ‘slower-paced’ songs to the end. This allows the listener to have a nice breather from the high(er) intensity songs, and start appreciating the band’s musical abilities even more.

On “Heavenly Hell”, Alexis Woodbury provides a very powerful vocal performance and you can finally understand that his voice is one of the main characteristics of the band, sometimes sounding like the vocalist from Tracedawn (when singing clean sections). The chorus section of this song is very epic, making this song one of our favorites. Our favorite song of “Ghosts” comes with the name of “The Desert Fox”, an epic 11 minute tale that nicely showcases everything that the band has to offer with this release.

In general, we have to say that “Ghosts” is probably one of the best debut albums we have heard from any band in a long time. Hopefully Instanzia continues to make good music and can actually play it live. If you are a fan of Symphonic Power Metal, you need to get this release and be amazed by it.

Release: November 22nd, 2010

Country: Canada