If the truth be told, I was rather wary of this release. When it landed through my letterbox I recoiled inwardly. The cover art resembles that of a fantasy computer game or novel, while the press release promises power / symphonic / dream metal full of magic, colour and mystery.
‘Venus Ignis Terra Aqua’ lifts the curtains on an album that’s conceived on monumentally epic proportions, and within the two minutes of its duration, packs in bombast on the grandest of scales, with sweeping stings, rapidfire percussion, thrash guitars and operatic vocals. Essentially, it’s an entire album in less than five minutes, and the same is true of more or less every piece that follows.
With a number of tracks – notably ‘March to the Darkest Horizon’, ‘The Day When I Turn Back Time’ and the title track – stretching out well past the six-minute mark, and taking in a full widescreen panorama with a chorus of hundreds and full-throttle drumming forging through several dramatic changes of mood and tempo with drama in abundance, like it or loathe it, you have to acknowledge Pathfinder’s brazen audacity. To criticise an album like ‘Fifth Element’ for being pompous, self-important, absurd is pointless, because it’s supposed to be all of these things, and it is. It’s also a while lot more, and achieves its objectives with aplomb. ‘Fifth Element’ isn’t so much an album as an extended sequence of mini metal operas.
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Is it too much? Of course – from beginning to end, ‘Fifth Element’ is an exercise in excess, unapologetic and endlessly overwrought. But if you’re going to go big, then there’s no point making a half-hearted stab at it, and Pathfinder don’t merely go over the top, but fly over it on winged horses of the apocalypse.
Pathfinder Online
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