Venturia - The New Kingdom

*=Staff's pick	New Kingdom* The Unholy One Words Of Silence* Take Me Down* Fallen World (Is There A Reason?) Walk On To The Daylight Candle Of Hope Through A Night Of Fears Dear Dead Bride

Genre	Progressive Metal	L. Robin, M. Ferreira	Vocals
Tracks	8	Charly Sahona	Guitar
Runningtime	45 Min.	-	Guitar
Label	Lion Music	Thomas James	Bass
Release	21 April 2006	Diego Rapacchietti	Drums
Country	France	Kevin Codfert	Keyboards
Similar artists	Dream Theater, Threshold, Shaaman

Venturia was formed in 2000 by French guitarist Charly Sahona and drummer Diego Rapacchietti. Later on they teamed up with male vocalist Marc Ferreira, a solo artist from New York, and to add depth to their music they also decided to hire a female vocalist named Lydie Robin. As a guest artist Kevin Codfert from Adagio also was invited to participate in the recording sessions of The New Kingdom.

The music of Venturia can be decribed as highly technical and sometimes a bit complex progressive metal that most of the time is very melodic and catchy. Even though this without a doubt is metal they have passages and melodies in their music that is on the border to be labelled as pop music with heavy rhythms. Think Images And Words by Dream Theater or the most progressive sides of Shaaman and you might have a clue of what we are served here.

The title track that opens the album is simply put a great song with accessible melodies and nice arrangements. In this song however they have included technical instrumental parts with a lot of breaks and what sounds like someone practising scales, something that I greatly dislike. Even if you are a great musician you don't have to show off, that's my humble opinion anyway. I'm glad to tell you that this isn't something that dominates the album but instead they mainly focus on delivering great songs and interesting arrangements.

The two biggest highlights can be found on the first half of the album. Words Of Silence starts quite calm with acoustic guitars and beautiful alternated vocals between Marc and Lydie. After the slow start the tempo is picked up a bit leading up to a breathtaking chorus. Take Me Down is much heavier than the previous song and the addictive and catchy chorus is surely the finest moment on The New Kingdom.

This album took some times to digest, mainly because the passages of musician's music I earlier mentioned. However, there is no question about that Venturia is a highly talented band that hereby proves their capability of writing interesting and enjoyable progressive metal. If they decrease the showing off and succeeds in making the songs a bit more even the next time it will be something worth waiting for, but this work of art should already appeal to a lot of progressive fans out there.

Production	Vocals	Compositions
7,5	8	7

Summary
7 chalices of 10 - Hawk