Sabrina Carpenter spent the decade after her debut single, 2014’s “Can’t Blame a Girl for Trying,” patiently finding her voice. Her persistence finally paid off in 2024, when the absurdly catchy singles “Espresso” and “Please, Please, Please” launched the former child star into a whole new realm of pop stardom. Her sixth album, August 2024’s *Short n’ Sweet*, reintroduced the pint-sized singer as a sharp-witted diva with a honeyed voice and a fondness for campy innuendo—and earned Carpenter her first two Grammys (Best Pop Vocal Album, Best Pop Solo Performance). Just over a year after *Short n’ Sweet*’s release, the biggest breakout pop star of 2024 fires off its follow-up, *Man’s Best Friend*, which carries on her streak of concise 12-track records that draw from her love of ’70s disco and ooze snarky, self-deprecating charisma. “Oh, boy,” Carpenter chuckles to begin lead single “Manchild,” which taps the usual co-writers (Jack Antonoff and Amy Allen) for a country-tinged ode to the incompetent, unavailable men she can’t seem to shake. Romantic disappointment prevails, though the 26-year-old maintains her sense of humor as she wishes an ex a lifetime of celibacy on “Never Getting Laid” and drunk-dials old flames on the twangy “Go Go Juice.” Steeped in the nostalgic sounds of her heroes (Dolly Parton, the Carpenters, ABBA, the Bee Gees), Carpenter’s lyrics approach the drudgery of modern dating with a wink and a well-timed dirty joke. “I promise none of this is a metaphor,” she sings on the New Jack Swing-inspired “House Tour,” then she carries on: “I just want you to come inside.”
Since blowing up in 2015 with their fourth album, *Blurryface*, the duo of Tyler Joseph and Josh Dun have parlayed their high-concept rap-rock-pop hybrid into massive mainstream success. All the while, they’ve built an ornate fictional universe in which the exploits of characters like Clancy and the Torchbearer function as allegories about living with depression, anxiety, and insecurity. *Breach*, the duo’s eighth album, concludes the decade-long narrative that began with *Blurryface* and continued with their next three full-lengths (2018’s *Trench*, 2021’s *Scaled and Icy*, and 2024’s *Clancy*), resolving the cliffhanger of its predecessor’s ending. Through a dense rap-rock dystopia populated by robots and necromancers, the duo fight through bouts of insecurity (“Garbage”) and paranoia (“The Contract,” which recruits YUNGBLUD to continue where last year’s “Paladin Strait” left off). “Did you learn a thing?” Joseph sings on the haunting closing track, looking back on the decade-long journey and concluding: “Intentions will set you free.”
When JADE made her bombastic solo debut with “Angel of My Dreams” in July 2024, her yet to be named album had already been completed. The song, a Mike Sabath production that splices power-ballad theatrics, stomping electro basslines, and sugary, sardonic melodies into a Frankenstein’s monster of a tune, was hailed by fans and critics alike for its bold experimentalism, setting up sky-high expectations for the Little Mix star’s future output. As JADE told Apple Music’s Rebecca Judd, shortly after its release: “There’s a lot of songs on the record that have that same experimental vibe. I have a few of the more straight-down-the-line, poppy songs on there, but peppered in with the chaos that is my brain.” The statement holds water now *THAT’S SHOWBIZ BABY!* has landed. Front-loaded with singles, which see JADE navigate shimmering disco sensuality (“Fantasy”), ballroom club (RAYE co-write “Midnight Cowboy”), and no-punches-pulled electropop (“FUFN (Fuck You for Now)”) with consummate ease, the back half of the record pulls her broad spectrum of influence together cohesively without sacrificing any of the originality or left-field choices that have come to shape her sonic identity. “I think \[the reaction to ‘Angel of My Dreams’\] has given me reassurance that I can really be myself,” JADE said. “I can take these risks. I can do something a bit braver…” That confidence extends to the album’s lyrical themes, which examine JADE’s complex feelings about life in the spotlight, love and its maddening effects—see the delightfully unhinged romance of “Plastic Box”—and the relatable feeling of being at war with your own mind, from all angles. She shoulders her own blame for throwing up emotional walls on “Self Saboteur” only to pull back the curtain with skittish midtempo “Glitch,” revealing the distorted inner voice “telling me lies, telling me how it is” and “hijacking all my decisions.” “Unconditional” makes floaty, ethereal promises of love without reservations to someone struggling to love themselves over a chugging, synth-pop beat, while “Natural at Disaster” takes the concept of a torch song and interprets it literally, putting a vocally dramatic match to the gentle, piano-backed memory of a toxic dynamic. “If there are any darker topics that are personal to me that I write about, then I always give it a bit of a humor to it,” JADE said, speaking to Apple Music’s Zane Lowe in the week of release. “It’s been fun as a songwriter being able to finally write more personal concepts and explore that and show people exactly who I am.” Unsurprisingly, given JADE’s widespread songwriting contributions during the decade she spent as a member of one of the UK’s most successful girl groups, *THAT’S SHOWBIZ BABY!* shares some of its DNA (and its producers, including Sabath, MNEK, and Lostboy) with the sounds of late-career Little Mix. While it’s common for band members striking out on their own for the first time to reinvent themselves entirely—a kickback against the artistic compromise that collective creativity demands—JADE boldly bucks the trend, converging her own unique impetus with echoes of the familiar. *THAT’S SHOWBIZ BABY!* feels more grounded in authenticity as a result, allowing her to take ownership of her past as she builds for the future.
ADÉLA refuses to be tamed. She first turned heads on the *Pop Star Academy: KATSEYE* documentary series, pairing powerhouse performances with an outspoken demeanor that kept online discourse buzzing long after the show ended. In her next act as a solo artist, the Slovakia-born, LA-based singer and dancer channels that fearlessness into her debut EP, *The Provocateur*. Across seven songs, she distills her experiences chasing stardom into maximalist electro-pop—sometimes dark and jagged, sometimes tongue-in-cheek, but always bold and unflinchingly honest. “Superscar” delivers chilling commentary on industry exploitation—“Maybe I should count myself so lucky, so lucky/All these dirty hands they wanna touch me, so touch me,” she sings—while Britney-esque club thumper “SexOnTheBeat” flips hypersexualization on its head, its chopped moans giving the track a self-aware edge. On the Grimes-produced “Machine Girl,” she turns her gaze to the audience, calling out their thirst for drama. And over the industrial churn of “FinallyApologizing,” ADÉLA leaves parasocial haters no doubt: “You won’t get what you want from me.”
After the rousing success of 2022’s *Pain Remains*, New Jersey deathcore crew Lorna Shore returns with their fifth album. Vocalist Will Ramos made his full-length debut with the band on *Pain Remains*, and felt the pressure to deliver again on *I Feel the Everblack Festering Within Me*. “I definitely approached this one with 1,000 percent more anxiety, if you can imagine,” he tells Apple Music. “Everyone’s like, ‘What’s the next Lorna Shore album going to be like? It’s got to be the most incredible thing ever.’ That stuff is always in the back of your mind when you’re writing stuff.” The title *I Feel the Everblack Festering Within Me* is taken from a line in the album’s opening track, “Prison of Flesh.” “It’s about my family’s history of dementia,” Ramos says, which creates “a fear inside, like you’re running from something. That line is one of my favorites from the song, but honestly, we were just trying to come up with a sick-ass name.” Musically speaking, Ramos and his bandmates—guitarist Adam De Micco, drummer Austin Archey, bassist Michael Yager, and guitarist Andrew O’Connor—expand Lorna Shore’s crushing sonic palette while stripping back some of their renowned technicality in favor of monster grooves on tracks like “Unbreakable,” “In Darkness,” and the Lamb of God-inspired “War Machine.” “We weren’t too strict on keeping it 100 percent deathcore or 100 percent death metal or whatever other people expect Lorna Shore to put out,” Ramos says. “At the end of the day, we just want to put out good music.” Below, he comments on each song. **“Prison of Flesh”** “My grandma, I don’t know where she is in her head at this point. My aunt is slowly forgetting things. Throughout the song, I personify these demons that are coming to get you, but the demons are the void that’s slowly filling you up. The song ends in this big climax like you’ve just been eaten by whatever this void is, until you don’t even know who you are or who the people around you are. It’s my ode to people with dementia and the families who have to deal with that.” **“Oblivion”** “I think *Interstellar* is the best movie ever. There’s a scene where the astronauts go to a water planet that looks beautiful but is actually hell. They realize that they made the worst decision they could have made, and by doing that they screwed themselves. I thought it was a perfect example of the things that we’re doing to ourselves and to our own planet. We’re going to look back and be like, ‘What the hell did we do?’ The song sounds surreal and angelic but also kind of desolated. And that’s exactly how we felt when we watched *Interstellar*.” **“In Darkness”** “This is one of the band’s favorites because it just sounds freaking huge. It’s basically a song that goes out to all of the outcasts. I think all of us that are metalheads know the feeling. Now it’s cool, but back in the day people were probably looking at you weird because you’re a little bit different than what everybody else wants. So it’s like we were raised in a valley of darkness—that’s the metaphor I think of—but in that darkness we became exactly who we are, and that’s awesome.” **“Unbreakable”** “This is completely out there for Lorna Shore. I wanted a song that people would react to like Queen back in the day, when they played ‘We Will Rock You’ and people are clapping their hands, stomping their feet, and they’re part of the show. I wanted that unity in a room full of people that is so powerful that you have this moment when you feel like you’re on top of the world. So this is supposed to be that unifying type of song. It\'s talking about how we’re almost like diamonds: The pressure of everything has squeezed us together and we became this beautiful thing that is perfect and imperfect at the same time, but unbreakable.” **“Glenwood”** “To me, this is the most important song on the album. It’s about when I fixed my ties with my father. My dad and I had a very strange relationship when I was growing up. We had a lot of moments when we did not talk, and the last time was for a lot of years. I don’t think it was out of any kind of animosity. I think we were just so similar and so incredibly stubborn that we fought a lot about dumb stuff. He had to work a lot, which meant he wasn’t home, and I never really saw him. He was working so we could live in a nice area, but as a kid you don’t really see that. You just think he should be home more. But I’m an adult now, and I get it. I wanted to capture that feeling.” **“Lionheart”** “This song is supposed to feel like you’re going into battle. You don’t know what the world is going to throw at you, but you’re going to face it. It’s supposed to be a super-empowering song, like you’re on a horse galloping into this hellfire, but whatever the trials are that you’re about to face, you’re down to do it. We’ve got ‘Unbreakable’ to bring everyone together, and now we’re gonna go fight some shit. Let’s fucking go.” **“Death Can Take Me”** “It’s a song about being in a position of power. As time goes on, you feel like you have to hide how you are, and in a way, it feels incredibly numbing. I think I\'m trying to describe the way that Lorna Shore was when we finally got big, we finally freaking made it, and it just felt like everything that we did, we were walking on eggshells. And you know there’s people who are knocking on your door, just waiting to pull the rug out from under you and take whatever you have. I think you can only be in that position for so long until you’re like, ‘I don’t want this anymore.’ So the song ends with this person jumping off of a tower and basically just being like, ‘I’m going to splat on the ground, and the whole world can watch this happen and know that it was because of everybody that got me to this point.’” **“War Machine”** “We wanted to write a song that was an ode to all the older bands that we listened to growing up, like Lamb of God. But it took a long time to figure out how to write this one. Like on ‘Unbreakable,’ we wanted to pull back a little bit on vocals and rather than shredding the fretboard into oblivion, we wanted to write something that was groovy, heavy, and angry. So we made it sound like you’re in the fucking trenches, the world has been taking from you, you’re pissed, and now it’s time for you to take back from the world.” **“A Nameless Hymn”** “This is basically our anti-religion song. All of us in Lorna Shore were raised Christian but as we got older, we started to stray from our beliefs. We started to realize there’s so much hypocrisy and cruelty involved, and nobody does anything about it. If you’re into metal, there’s probably a good chance that you gave up on the Christian world, and there’s nothing wrong with that. So I wrote this from the perspective of a pious Christian who’s dying. He’s sacrificed so much for something that never came through for him. In his last moments, he looks for redemption but never gets it. He’s angry and resentful and he ends up unseen, unheard.” **“Forevermore”** “When we were writing this, we were describing it as a Viking shooting a flaming arrow at a wooden ship floating off into the sunset. Me and Adam had two big losses in our immediate families, and for me it was my first loss of somebody that was very close to me. It got me all fucked up and it was hard for me grieve because when it happened, I went on tour the next day. This was a young dude who passed away, and it was very unexpected. So I wanted to write a song that was an ode to him. One of my favorite lines in the song is, ‘This isn\'t goodbye, we\'ll meet again on the other side.’ It’s about finally having acceptance of that loss. I’m sad he died, but I’m also happy that I got to live at the same time as him, in some of the same moments with him.”
In 2024, Three Days Grace surprised their fans by welcoming original vocalist Adam Gontier back into the fold. The singer had left in 2013, prompting the multiplatinum Canadian rock group to bring in Matt Walst, younger brother of bassist Brad Walst, to fill the vacant lead vocalist position. After three successful albums with Walst at the helm, Three Days Grace are back with *Alienation*, their first with two lead singers. “During the pandemic, Matt and Brad were talking about the idea of me coming back,” Gontier tells Apple Music. “Brad brought it to me, and it seemed like the right time. I had a lot of life to live over the past 10 years to get to the place I’m at now, which is a good place. So the timing just seemed perfect.” As Matt Walst tells it, the transition from one lead vocalist to two was less difficult than it might seem. “It was actually pretty effortless,” he says. “We got in a room and started writing this record and it just happened so easily. It didn’t take a lot of effort to make it work.” Lyrically, Three Days Grace returned to the theme of isolation that they’ve touched upon consistently since their 2003 debut. “The idea of feeling isolated and feeling like you’re on your own, even when you’re in a group of people, we’ve written about that a lot over the years,” Gontier says. “I think it’s something we all tend to feel at some point.” Below, he and Walst discuss each track. **“Dominate”** Matt Walst: “We have a song called ‘The Mountain’ from 2018, and it’s like a sports anthem. We wanted to write another anthem that you could play in the dressing room or work out to. We played Scotland a few years back, and between every song the crowd would chant, ‘Here we, here we, here we effing go. Here we...’ It was so cool, and I thought it’d be great to put that in a song. Finally, I had my chance.” **“Apologies”** Adam Gontier: “Our drummer Neil \[Sanderson\] started this one with Dan Lancaster, one of the producers of this album. Dan brought in a few different things that we wouldn’t normally do when we’re writing, and I think you can hear that on ‘Apologies.’ It’s a little bit outside the norm for us, because the verses feel a little poppier and then it’s got a pretty deep, heavy chorus. Lyrically, it’s about people around you offering to help in certain situations when you don’t necessarily feel like you deserve that help. I know I’ve been in that state quite a few times.” **“Mayday”** Walst: “‘Mayday’ is about the state of the world and how crazy and confusing it is and not knowing who’s piloting the plane. It’s like you’re on this flight and nobody’s at the wheel.” **“Kill Me Fast”** Gontier: “It’s another one we worked on with Dan Lancaster, and another one that’s outside of the norm for us. Lyrically, it’s about being in a relationship with somebody that you feel has one foot out the door but they’re still dragging you along. The song is saying, ‘If you’re going to leave, just do it and quit dragging me along for the ride.’” **“In Waves”** Gontier: “Over the last bunch of years, we’ve all lost people in our lives that we love, and ‘In Waves’ is about that. It’s about still feeling that loss around you, feeling that person around you still, and not necessarily being able to let it go—always feeling their presence or hearing their voice. It’s a pretty personal song, and it’s definitely one of my favorites on the album.” **“Alienation”** Gontier: “I feel like ‘Alienation’ is a song that could have been on our \[2006\] album *One-X*. It’s got classic Three Days Grace vibes. Lyrically, it’s that whole thing about feeling isolated and alienated that I was talking about earlier. It’s one of those things a lot of people go through and can relate to. When I first started writing music at 14 years old, I was listening to bands like Nirvana and Soundgarden and Alice In Chains and Pearl Jam, so that whole vibe, and their theme of isolation, was a big influence.” **“Never Ordinary”** Walst: “‘Never Ordinary’ is just about finding somebody and being outcasts together, always being different or outsiders, but breaking through and just being who you are no matter what the situation.” **“Deathwish”** Walst: “This is about not worrying about tomorrow and living in the moment and not really caring what happens the next day. I feel like I used to live in that world a lot in my earlier days in my music career, when I was just partying and just going all out.” Gontier: “Yeah, we all used to do that. It’s like Matt said in an earlier interview: Probably when we were sponsored by Jägermeister. We used to just go mad without any regard for tomorrow.” **“Don’t Wanna Go Home Tonight”** Gontier: “We all really love this one. It has an older, vintage feel to it, and that was the goal. I remember driving around the small town that we lived in—Norwood, Ontario, a town of 1,500 people—driving around back roads there, just smoking joints and not caring about anything else. The song is sort of an homage to that, because we just don’t do that anymore. But those were good times, man.” **“In Cold Blood”** Gontier: It’s a song we wrote about a relationship. It usually takes two people to mess something up. You’re letting your love die together. You’re both killing it in cold blood.” **“The Power”** Gontier: “This is also a relationship song. It’s about feeling like you’re powerless because you’re so deep in the relationship and that person has so much power over you. The song is about that realization of ‘I don’t want that anymore. You have all the power, and I need to take it back.’ So it’s about getting out of that relationship to get your power back, get your freedom back.” **“Another Relapse”** Gontier: “Way back before the band was even signed, I had my issues, and I battled addiction and stuff. And it’s still a constant thing. It’s always there. So, the song is kind of self-explanatory in that way—just being aware of relapse and what it means. I was in and out of rehabs and in and out of using so many times over the years, but thankfully not anymore. Musically, this song is a little bit different too, so we thought it was a good closer for the album.”
*IVE SECRET* is the second Korean mini album of 2025 for IVE, the K-pop girl group known for hits like “LOVE DIVE” and “After LIKE.” As the title suggests, the six-track album is an exploration of the lesser-known, complex emotions behind the glossy facade of the fourth-generation team, composed of members Gaeul, Yujin, Rei, Wonyoung, Liz, and Leeseo. Sonically, this means a more subdued sound for IVE. Gone are the soaring choruses of “I AM” and “REBEL HEART.” Instead, dreamy lead single “XOXZ” builds to a rap-chant chorus of the title slang, created to mean “I love you, good night, see you in my dreams.” IVE pairs the low-key chorus with a lulling, melodic “ooh-ooh, ooh,” a subtle and powerful reminder of their vocal prowess. The album’s “secret” theme is more explicit in tracks like “Dear, My Feelings,” a song about looking back at old diary entries with fondness, and “♥beats,” a laidback electropop bop about love explored on a digital landscape. Wonyoung participated in writing the lyrics for “XOXZ,” while Liz co-wrote the lyrics for “Midnight Kiss,” a midtempo pop ballad about missing a lover.
There’s some heavy reverse psychology at play in Ava Max’s third album, from the fake petition posted on DontClickPlayOnAvaMax.com (which led to a snippet of an unreleased single) to Max’s bewildering disappearance from social media in the weeks leading up to its release. Cosmic-brain marketing strategy or otherwise, the “Sweet but Psycho” singer follows up 2023’s *Diamonds & Dancefloors* with 12 tracks that split the difference between ’80s synth-pop, ’90s Eurodance, early career Gaga, and *Blackout*-era Britney. She toasts to blissful independence on “Lovin Myself” and “Sucks to Be My Ex” and goes blue jeans and apple pie mode (while channeling a-ha) for “Wet, Hot American Dream.” And over the title track’s four-on-the-floor thump, Max puts on shades, pops her collar, and reveals the trollish title’s full meaning: “If you didn’t come to dance/DJ, don’t click that.”
Ed Sheeran used his last two albums as a bit of a genre cleanse. Now he’s ready for a full pop revival on his eighth full-length. “I think *-* \[*Subtract*\] and *Autumn Variations* were a really good circuit breaker for me to just be like, ‘I’m a singer-songwriter, I’m going to make singer-songwriter albums and I am going to dip in and out of things when I feel like it,’” he tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “And I think that *Play* will be one of the last pop hurrahs that I’ll get away with.” *Play* inhabits a familiar but expanding sonic space in Sheeran’s oeuvre. For several songs, he relies heavily on diverse Eastern musical styles like the Bollywood-tinged “Sapphire,” the Persian-influenced “Azizam,” and the Punjabi-inspired “Symmetry.” “I’m just exploring completely new different world and cultures, and there are superstars in the same country with different languages, and that’s super exciting as well,” he says. On tracks like “Old Phone” (a remembrance of lost friends that recalls the storytelling of “Castle on the Hill”) and “The Vow” (which harkens to “Perfect” and “Thinking Out Loud”), he throws back to the traditional Sheeran sound of old. Both deeply personal and *mostly* relatable, many cuts belie his devotion to his family and wife. Two sweetly romantic odes, “In Other Words” and “For Always,” also describe universal emotions. “They’re very human things that you go through with your partner or your kids,” he says. “There’s stuff that I can relate to with my friends going through the same things. I’m very vastly different in other areas of my life and things that I do, but I think when you are a partner and a father and a friend, you share many, many, many experiences.” But it’s the album’s first song “Opening” that may be more specific to Sheeran’s particular circumstances, taking a critical eye to his own international fame. “Not the pop star they say they prefer/Kept quiet but I came to be heard/Been a long time up top, but I ain’t complacent/If I look down, I can see replacements.” He’s not worried, though, about those deemed “the next Ed Sheeran”: “I just take them on tour.”
TWICE gained wider global recognition in the summer of 2025 following their feature on the smash-hit soundtrack for *KPop Demon Hunters*, but the real-life girl group known for bops like “TT,” “What Is Love?,” “FANCY,” and “The Feels” was already one of the most successful K-pop acts of all time. Debuting in 2015 out of the idol survival show *Sixteeen*, Nayeon, Jeongyeon, Momo, Sana, Jihyo, Mina, Dahyun, Chaeyoung, and Tzuyu are popular worldwide for their bright discography, catchy choreo, and prolific output. *ENEMY*, their second full-length album release of 2025, is specifically targeted at Japan, where Korean idol music is a part of the mainstream pop scene and TWICE is incredibly popular. (Three of the group’s members, Momo, Sana, and Mina, are from Japan.) *ENEMY* is TWICE’s sixth full-length Japanese album, following 2018’s *BDZ*, 2019’s *&TWICE*, 2021’s *Perfect World*, 2022’s *Celebrate*, and 2024’s *DIVE*. The album’s rock-infused title track stretches the boundaries of TWICE’s self-described “color pop” sound while still fitting seamlessly into the group’s tradition of self-empowerment songs. “Even a flower cannot bloom without swaying,” members Dahyun and Chaeyoung rap in Japanese on the second verse of the pop-rock song about persisting through hardship. Though *ENEMY* flirts with other sounds across its nine tracks—like cheerful summer bop (“Up to you”), laidback electropop (“FINE”), meandering jazz-pop (“Love is more”), and sweet acoustic ballad (“Glow”)—it returns to J-rock for album-ender “Like 1,” a sentimental song composed by Taku and Toru, members of the veteran Japanese rock band ONE OK ROCK. The track’s lyrics were written by TWICE leader Jihyo, leaving listeners on a poignant, ambiguous note: “Know there will come a time/For a bittersweet salute (I wanna)/Stay in this moment now/But we don’t get to choose.”
On their self-titled debut as Verses GT, producers Nosaj Thing and Jacques Greene occupy a space between hazy atmospheres and club-ready rhythms. Recorded largely in person across London, LA, Tokyo, Paris, and Montreal, the album reflects a partnership dating back to 2018, even if their first joint single, “Too Close” with Ouri, didn’t arrive until 2023. Nosaj’s experimental soundscapes merge with Greene’s R&B-inflected club sensibilities to create a shadowy, textured sonic world. From the glowing open of “Fragment,” melancholy chords and spectral vocal chops loom over the album, cloaking the driving UK garage of “Unknown” and wintry, Burial-esque chill of “Left” in an eerie yet strangely serene darkness that feels like walking city streets at night. “Forever” introduces a skeletal hip-hop beat with hard-edged, raspy drums, before “Intention” thaws the chill into a warmer, woozy house groove. Guests George Riley, KUČKA, and TYSON add vibrant bursts of color, their voices cutting through the fog. Rather than chase hooks or big drops, *Verses GT* thrives on subtle shifts, where even small transitions can make an impact.
On their 15th album, German power metal vets Primal Fear hoist their chalices with a revamped lineup. *Domination* marks the studio debuts of new drummer André Hilgers (formerly of German metal mainstays Rage and Bonfire) and new guitarist Thalia Bellazecca, a 25-year-old Italian shredder known for her fleet-fingered online guitar covers. You can hear Primal Fear’s *Painkiller*-era Priest influence on opening track “The Hunter,” a battle-ready anthem that showcases their twin guitar assault and singer Ralf Scheepers’ impressive range in equal measure. On “Far Away,” Bellazecca and fellow ax-slinger Magnus Karlsson carve off a galloping backdrop for Scheepers’ Viking metal cadences before screaming into the moody instrumental “Hallucinations.” The soaring single “Tears of Fire” offers a tale of heroic glory, while Melissa Bonny of Swiss symphonic metallers Ad Infinitum makes a guest vocal appearance on the power ballad “Eden.”
