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Secret Sphere: Lifeblood
Secret Sphere - Lifeblood Album Art

Secret Sphere: Lifeblood

Melodic/Progressive/Power Metal
4.5/5.0

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Frontiers Music
Words: Craig Hartranft
Added: 03.05.2021 | Released: 12.03.2021

Long serving Italian metal band Secret Sphere will soon be celebrating their 25th anniversary. Formed in 1997 by guitarist Aldo Lonobile, the band has consistently offered new studio albums since 1999's Mistress of the Shadowlight. But in the last decade things have slowed. We last heard from Secret Sphere with 2017's The Nature Of Time. But give the guys a break. They've been busy.

Lonobile has been recording with Archon Angel, Edge Of Forever, and Sweet Oblivion featuring Geoff Tate, which will release a new album, Relentless in April. Meanwhile, bass player Andrea Buratto has been turning out albums with Eternal Idol and Hell In The Club; keyboard player Gabriele Ciaccia and drummer Marco Lazzarini (also Archon Angel, Hell In The Club) will drop a new Odd Dimension album this spring.

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Secret Sphere

Now Secret Sphere returns with their ninth studio project, Lifeblood, once more on the Frontiers Music label. The recording reunites the band with original and early vocalist Roberto Messina, who left after 2010's Archetype.

Once more, there's no mistaking Secret Sphere's musical agenda. This is melodic progressive power metal draped in a symphonic wrapper and featuring massive vocal arrangements, plenty of power metal gallop blended with rock groove, and an abundance of guitar and keyboard solos.

These elements are quite notable from the symphonic intro Shaping Reality as it moves into the expansive and galloping Lifeblood, where you hear your first tandem key and guitar solos. But within that song arrangement and also Life Survivors or Against All The Odds, you'll find segues where tempo drops and the rock groove rises. But, the rock groove is even more prominent with The End Of Ago, even with its heavy start and then driving tough riffage and rhythm Alternatively, sometimes Secret Sphere sticks to the fundamentals with straight forward fast and heavy power metal as with Alive and Solitary Flight. Perhaps the most obvious progressive metal comes with the eight minute The Lie We Love, where power metal heaviness duels with some light vocal segues where light piano is heard. The more traditional metal ballad arrives with Skywards, driven mostly by vocals and acoustic guitar in a symphonic envelope.

Most simply, Lifeblood finds Secret Sphere at their finest, delivering epic and ambitious, melodic and symphonic, progressive power metal. But what else would you expect from Secret Sphere? Recommended if your a fan of the band or genre.




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The Bottom Line

Fundamentally, and simply, Lifeblood finds Secret Sphere at their finest, delivering epic and ambitious, melodic and symphonic, progressive power metal. But what else would you expect from Secret Sphere? Recommended if your a fan of the band or genre.

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