Conception - The Last Sunset

The debut album by the now legendary Norwegian prog/power band. The style here is a bit progressive but leans toward the more conventionally melodic side of the metal spectrum. This is not their heaviest album, as many people seem to believe. Also, this album has none of those heavy chugging rhythms that became their trademark. The songs are mostly fast and mid-tempo with a few slow numbers. There are some surprising thrash influences like shouting choruses and grinding rhythms. All done in the melodic context of the songs, though. The band's official bio says that they actually replaced their original singer with Khan after recording some of these songs in a demo. They realized they needed a more versatile vocalist as they moved away from their thrashy beginnings. The original singer, Dag Ostby (a brother of the guitarist, perhaps?) is credited with lyrics for many songs on this album.

Khan's voice is one of the main attractions of this album. This is true for the following band efforts too. He has a great atmosphere-building tone and never sounds strained or too high pitched. Khan mostly sings in the mid-to-high notes. Such beautiful voice is a rarity in metal. How many times have we been unpleasantly surprised when otherwise great bands are fronted by bad or even unbearable singers? No such compromises need to be made here. There is almost no accent present, another plus. Lyrics are often quite abstract, but sound very good along with the music. Very few truly awkward lyrical moments here, another rarity for a band from a non-English speaking country. On Parallel Minds, Khan chooses to sing much of the time in a more aggressive and far less pleasant low-to-mid range voice with a more prominent accent. But whenever he does go higher, it sounds more powerful than most of vocals on this album.

Guitarist Tore Ostby wrote all the songs and most of the lyrics. Most songs are good/satisfactory with a few excellent tunes that would make it to the Conception's Best of compilation, if one were ever released. Many songs feature great pre-solo refrains.

Guitar playing is far above average with many enjoyable acoustic interludes. Rhythms are played in a more melodic fashion as opposed to the progressively dissonant rhythms on the next albums. There is an aggressive, somewhat thrashy edge present, a good thing here. While most solos here are simply good, some are amazingly melodic and emotional. Unfortunately, Ostby moves away from this melodically oriented soloing to more progressive/neo-classical style on future releases.

1. Prevision. A worthless one-minute prelude.
2. Building a Force. Fast-riffed song with cool shreddy fills.
3. War of Hate. An ok song. Long solo section that starts out acoustic/flamenco and then goes electric, a pattern repeated throughout the album.
4. Bowed Down with Sorrow. Slow Sabbath-like monotonous main riffs with Khan providing a great vocal melody. A very cool combo. Awesome vocal refrain leads into a great slow solo. One of the best songs here.
5. Fairy's Dance. Funny lyrics about an evil fairy seducing someone and then turning him into a .cow (of all things). Beautifully flowing chorus is a definite highlight.
6. Another World. A solid song.
7. Elegy. Another worthless short instrumental.
8. The Last Sunset. The only song not written by Ostby alone but co-written with Khan. For about half the song Khan is singing the gentle melody with sparse instrumentation. If one looks at the cover while listening, it is quite easy to imagine yourself being lifted to the sky by Khan's mesmerizing voice and floating around in those clouds. Such is the power of this magnificent song. One of the best Conception tunes.
9. Live to Survive. Nice fast song with a great solo. Khan really wails on the chorus, very similar to the Conception choruses of the future and very different from the very controlled style of singing on the rest of the album.
10. Among the Gods. Every Conception album, except Flow has a long song like this one. This is the longest (10 minutes) and probably the best song on the debut. It alternates between slow grinding sections with shouting and normal choruses, and very cool acoustic guitar sections which feature some of the best Spanish/flamenco-influenced playing found in rock/metal genre, complete with flamenco-like percussion. This is a lot like the flamenco bit in Queen's Innuendo title track played by Steve Howe (Yes), where Brian May follows it up with an electric version. Some keyboards here too. The last Ostby solo sounds very close to Yngwie's Far Beyond the Sun.