Ravenheart

Whenever a tender voice rouses a glittering tear from your eye, whenever a resonant melody resembles a free flight through an endless sky, and whenever the pure energy of a song penetrates your body like a powerful breath that's when you experience the very essence of music. This intense energy does not pour forth from a rigid system of stylistic constraints and predictable factors, but from an unbridled emotionality from a consistently reinvented and rewoven network of profound feelings and thoughts. That Xandria still won't allow themselves to be squeezed into one pigeonhole with other acts but insist on composing their own, highly original scores is corroborated by their successful effort to turn their sensual world into music: even more than its predecessor, Ravenheart; ventures beyond the archetypical patterns of the music landscape. Xandria and their multi-facetted album no longer fit into the sinister-romantic framework of your standard gothic outfit, although all the relevant elements can still be found in their arrangements. It would seem that vocalist Lisa and her three band mates have outgrown stylistic limitations, concentrating instead on colourful details, innovative ideas and direct emotional access to their melodies. The result consists of fifty intense minutes of multi-layered, contemporary rock music that defies conceivable, straightforward description. The chorus part on the title tack, Ravenheart, is only one of the many innovations that Xandria have invited into their creative process. Next to orchestral passages, the band have increasingly oriented themselves to the imminent, straightforward live effect of their material, which resulted in a lot of effort going into their guitar riffs, drum rhythms and experimentation with a host of unusual effects, sounds and instruments, like the sitar. Producer Jos© Alvarez-Brill, famous for this cooperation with Wolfsheim, not only supported the band's self-finding process but also contributed his own ideas. The work on the album went on for months working on and within themselves and lead to a dozen songs on a silver disc, entitled Ravenheart: a stylistic big bang devoid of any market- compatible limitations. Released on Artoffact Records and available April 14th, 2009.