DIVINEFIRE – Farewell

It’s time for the Christian Power Metalers of Divinefire to release their fourth and final album Farewell. Divinefire has been looked upon as a supergroup as its members have been in various well-known bands. The band consists of drummer and guitarist Jani Stefanovic (Am I Blood, Sins Of Omission, Renascent), vocalist Christian Liljegren (Narnia) and bass player Andreas Olsson (Narnia, Rob Rock, Stormwind). The guitars are handled by Carl Johan Grimmark (Narnia, Rob Rock, Beautiful Sin).

With their last album Into A New Dimension (2006) they went more Symphonic than on the previous albums Glory Thy Name (2004) and Hero (2005). On Farewell they try to combine the styles from their previous albums with a more extreme and more Symphonic style. Though the two previous albums only contained clean vocals they’ve got vocalist Christian Liljegren’s brother Hubertus to do some growling this time, just like he did on their debut album Glory Thy Name.

The growling actually adds more variety to Divinefire’s music and it goes great with the Symphonic parts and the extremely fast guitar riffing. You can hear this on songs like “You’ll Never Walk Away” and “Grow And Follow.” Those two are the highlights of this record. The songs are very well written and contain great Symphonic arrangements as well as good varieties between the extreme parts with growling and the more standard Heavy Metal parts with clean vocals. These songs also see lead guitarist Grimmark’s best solos on the record.

Songs like “Unity” and “My Roots Are Strong In You” are a bit too straight forward, and rely much on the standard Power Metal sound with double kick drums, heavy riffing and so forth. Not that there’s anything wrong in that, but these songs don’t offer anything new. “Pass The Flame” is the only song that follows this pattern that really has something to offer. The song is intense and contains some really interesting orchestra elements, and an incredible arpeggio solo from Mr. Grimmark.

While the rest of the songs on this record are between four and five minutes of length, “Heal Me” is the big epic song of the album with its twelve minutes and twenty seconds. It’s a great song and it relies much on the orchestra elements, but it’s also very varied. You could say that “Heal Me” summons up the various styles included on this album, and it’s a great way to end this album (if you can see past the unnecessary outro for the album called “Farewell”).

The production on Farewell is a bit too plain and you can really hear this affecting the drum sound. If they added a bit more dynamic to the mixing/mastering process they would have gotten a much better drum sound with a lot more to offer in the lower register of the frequency scale. In other words, the drums could have kicked ass and the album could have sounded much better.

All in all, this is a great release and it’s definitely the best album from Divinefire so far. This kind of makes it sad that this is their final album. On most religious inspired records people often have a problem to cope with the lyrics. Farewell contains only lyrics dealing with their beliefs in Christianity and most of all their admiration for Jesus. However, there is so much going on musically on this album that if you are normally bothered by these kinds of lyrics chances are you won’t mind this time. Bottom-line is that… whether you like Christian music or not, this is an album you should pick up if you’re into Symphonic Power Metal.

Divinefire are:
Jani Stefanovic – Drums, rhythm guitars, keyboards & programming
Christian Liljegren – Lead vocals
Andreas Olsson – Bass

Guests:
Hubertus Liljegren – Growls
Mats Levén – Backing vocals
Carl Johan Grimmark – Lead guitar & acoustic guitars

Track list:

1. Calling The World
2. Unity
3. You’ll Never Walk Away
4. Pass The Flame
5. Grow And Follow
6. My Roots Are Strong In You
7. King Of Kings
8. Heal Me
9. Farewell