Vision Divine-Destination set to nowhere

earMUSIC / Armoury Records
 2012

Italy's Vision Divine have created a concept album about escaping into space. As a science fiction fan that's alright by me. I am sure we have all thought about getting away from things at one point in time. This album explores an option that offers more potential. The sound here is a cross between European power metal like Gamma Ray, Helloween, Stratovarious and others and metal like Dream Theater. Much of this album sounds like it could easily have been done in the late 1990's. Olaf Thorsen (Carlo Andrea Magnani), guitarist of the veteran power metal Labyrinth created this act as a side project but it turned into something more than that. I suppose the musical styles here fit well for the story they tackled. The flow of the music they have created with it's soaring melodies and multi-ranged vocals tend to make you feel like you are on a journey. Vision Divine are not doing a whole you have never heard before and a few songs sound similar to one another. The playing is technically sound and they know enough to gain your interest through tones and tempo changes rather than just trying to impress you with fitting as many notes in as they can. In this manner of showing some restraint they put the focus on the story they are trying to tell. On that note they are competent enough storytellers. I don't know that I could listen to this album all that often, but I enjoyed it.

Labor day reviewathon count-4 down 6 to go 
Time left- two days, two hours and around seven minutes
*I need to review ten albums by the end of Labor Day or I have to listen to Warrant's Cherry Pie. (I really need to get one more done tonight to be on track).