Xandria started out releasing their demo’s on the internet, in the early 2000′s, in MP3 format and making a name for themselves. They’ve since gained critical success across Europe and have now enlisted their third female singer. Manuela Kraller fronts the band on their fifth album, “Neverworld’s End.” Being from a Finnish choir, she adds another dimension to Xandria’s sound that brings a tonal richness to their specific blend of symphonic metal.

The album overflows with their unique blend of metal and symphonic sounds and is only enhanced by the operatic vocals of Kraller. Whether this is your usual style of music or not, you cannot deny how well constructed and precise the musical elements are on this album.

A heart pounding pace continues for a little over half of the album and then the mood suddenly shifts. The sounds of a symphony are replaced, without transition, with music that can only be described as resembling old Irish folk songs. The contrast of folksy upbeat traditional sounds and heavy metal guitar and drums fuse together in a way that most people couldn’t imagine would work as well as it does.

Xandria derives their strength from the intricacies and how precise the different styles of music fit together, but this also the album’s weakness. The band pulls off the symphonic metal so well that when they abruptly change to the Lord of the Rings style music layered with heaviness, it leaves the listener shocked. The songs I am dubbing “Game of Thrones + heavy metal,” are just as good and well-crafted as the other tracks, but it seems as though there should have been some sort of transition or separation between the two distinct styles.

Overall, the album is impressive with how well the band blends the diverse styles together. The only negative thing about the record, as a whole, is how quickly it changes, after several songs, to a completely different style without any transition at all.

Preview Music From the Album

Valentine 

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Cursed

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