Leafblade - Beyond, Beyond

\r\nThere are sometimes where you come to question yourself and your beliefs, times that even reality itself seems frail. I have to admit that Leafblade’s new release almost left me in a comatose condition where I was questioning my own existence! “So what’s with the delirious intro?” some may ask. Well let me make myself clear. Putting the cd on the cd player and pressing the “play” button, I was confused, by listening to these ambient sounds followed by acoustic guitars and since the cd is a cd-r, at first I thought that I had put on the wrong disc, you see I’ve got these “White spirit” cd’s with Native Indian music in my collection so.., but after the first shock I managed to pull myself together an come to the conclusion that either Leafblade’s music is “extremely progressive” or is the living proof of the fact that “NOT every release that comes out as a project of a former Metal musician IS NESESSARILY HEAVY METAL!!” (and therefore should not be on Metalzone.gr). Leafblade were formed in 2004 by the guitarist Sean Jude and they are as related to Metal Music as King Diamond is related to Greek traditional dancing. The fact that Sean shares equally the creation of the album with his old friend Daniel Cavanagh of Anathema, the record label considering that this is a Heavy Metal release did not hesitate to send it to us for a review! “Beyond, Beyond” as the title implies, is an album way beyond metal since the music we got here is a collection of acoustic tracks praising the harmony and spiritual balance of Mother Nature through “natural” ambient sounds ( birds twittering, streams murmuring etc.) while in some parts you can listen to some distant percussion along with chanting vocals that simply escort the acoustic guitar melodies. There are almost no bass guitars, rare drumming while the term “electricity” is yet unknown. At this point I have to make clear that I don’t undermine Leafblade’s beautiful music or the quality of their compositions that really carry you away in any case, I just don’t understand why they’ve sent an album like this to a Heavy Metal webzine! The only reason I wrote this review is to prevent record companies from sending more releases irrelevant to the genre in order to be reviewed, labeling them as Metal just because there happens to be a metal musician involved in any way. That explains the absence of rating. Let’s get real guys!\r\n

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\r\nDimitris Karantounias\r\n

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