Daniele Liverani - Fantasia (2014)

It is still fresh in my ears when Daniele Liverani released Eleven Mysterious only two years ago in 2012. That album was received well and still frequent play in my shred play list. Not losing a momentum, Daniele comeback with his latest concept, Fantasia. This is yet another ambitious project, it's very conceptual album, done in instrumental guitar setting of course. It's remind us to  Fantastic is the word here. In Fantasia, Daniele consistent to only one styles, progressive metal, which mean he lessened a lot of other popular shred styles such as the neo-classical stuffs.

Unbreakable is the opening act. A short cinematic sounds effects gives a clue about where the story started. The guy (or robot) doing the speech is familiar to us, who listen to Eleven Mysterious previously. Unbreakable is solid a progressive piece, the rocket toms (sounds very Mike Mangini stuffs..) is exploding left to right. For such important rules, drummer Simon Ciccotti is given the faith to lead the rhythm section. The influence of neo-classical stuffs only appeared on the fourth track, Apocalypse, preceding its two 'standard' shred stuffs in Joke and Peacefully. Daylight, with piano leading in phrases and odd meter all around the song, this is very technical stuffs that at the same time still achieving its musical purposes for being 'enjoyable'. Overall the album, the bass itself have a lot of 'foreground' moment, but only in Gigantic that the bass is the leading riff-ers. And we reach the ballad moment, in Black Horse, which is a bluesy ballad guitar cut. The other mellow song is in Heaven. And Daniele choose to end the album with another neo classic arpeggios jam, in Rage.

Just a couple days from new year of 2014, we already presented a great instrumental album. Fantasia is slightly different in styles compared to Eleven Mysterious. While the previous album deal with heavier tunes, virtuoso stuffs, Fantasia is approaching more melodic area, and also being more story-driven plot. The band only consisted of other three recordings artist, in which only keyboardist Marco Zago was appeared in previous album. Daniele able to spread well the musical duties among his musicians and Fantasia really sounds like a whole band music. Do not let this album slip away if you are guitar shred head!

Metal Harem class: ********** nine stars out of ten

Daniele Liverani – Fantasia (2014)
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01. Unbreakable
02. Joke
03. Peacefully
04. Apocalypse
05. Daylight
06. Gigantic
07. Black Horse
08. Outstanding
09. Guilty
10. Heaven
11. Rage

Daniele Liverani (guitars and others)
Marco Zago (keyboards)
Nicolò Vese (bass)
Simon Ciccotti (drum)