Rhapsody - Symphony Of Enchanted Lands II - The Dark Secret (CD)

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At last, the sixth album of the Italian Melodic/Epic/Power Metallers is finally in my hands. I'd like to believe that it is unnecessary to introduce Rhapsody to you. There must not be many people on this planet that listen to Heavy Metal and do not know Rhapsody. For this I will continue straight away on to the presentation of “Symphony Of Enchanted Lands II -The Dark Secret.
In their sixth album, Rhapsody are playing the familiar (to us) Melodic/Epic/Power Metal that they used to play all these years. Their lyrics are a continuation of the narration of the Emerald Sword Saga carrying on from the point where Power of the dragonflame had stopped. Christopher Lee's voice, who appears in this album to do some narrations, is very imposing and gives the album an even more majestic tone.
Concerning the musical part of the album, they still have the same timbre and style of playing like in all their other albums. The guitars play neoclassical solos and riffs, the keyboards play all the symphonic parts and make the atmosphere epic and enchanting,  supported by appearances by more than a dozen international guest soloists and the entire Bohuslav Martinu Philharmonic Orchestra from the Czech Republic, a 50 piece choir. They've managed to make this album more symphonic than all the others. Fabio Lione's voice is as always perfect and it overcomes all the difficult vocal parts of the album.
The massive production, led by Luca Turilli and Alex Staropoli themselves, was done in several studios throughout Europe; from England to Italy, from the Czech Republic and Belgium to Germany.
However, “Symphony Of Enchanted Lands II -The Dark Secret is a little tiring. It has some very long songs, more than like the ones on their other albums, and it is too full of symphonic keyboards and atmospherically parts played by the Orchestra. The fact that it has too much orchestral parts and keyboards is not always a good factor. In this album there's simply too much and they're starting to tire the listener. Also, the playing time of this album being too much is one more thing that may tire someone.
Nevertheless, “Symphony Of Enchanted Lands II -The Dark Secret is a good album and all the fans of Rhapsody will like it. For all the rest I'd suggest they listened to it too. They have nothing to lose. If they get tired of it there are five more very good albums from Rhapsody if they want to listen to them.