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Review:
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Finland's Dotma were formed by keyboarder Harri Koskela
in 2005, who is also a member of Embassy of Silence. They
specialise in sumptuous soaring sublime symphonic metal
that is midway between fellow Fins Amberian Dawn and the
fantastic Russians Narwhal Tusk. Delightful Johanna Lesonen
has a truly beautiful soft operatic voice that also reminds
me of Amberian's Heidi Parviainen and Narwhal's Valetina
Yastremskaya. Joining her on a few tracks is Embassy's Ines
Lukkanen and tenor Vladimir Lumi, which makes a nice change
to the more usual beauty/beast, metal/opera combos. The
superb rich production is suitably epic for this most epic
of bands, I wish I could find another word for epic because
I am in danger of using it a lot in this review. You will
be more than impressed with the first six multifaceted medium
sized epics that feature glorious melodies, rapturous choirs
and ornate orchestrations, including the gorgeous ballad
'Indian Fall'. But then they climax with two highly ambitious,
gargantuan epics , the 11 minute 'Kingdom of the Sky' which
segues seamlessly into the 8 minute 'Memory Worth Dying
For' and you will be very very impressed. The splendid sleeve
art is by Imperia guitarist Yan Yrlund who also designed
the cover of their latest CD as well as many other artists.
This is beautiful dreamy paradisiacal music that is a total
joy to listen to, their site is http://www.dotma.net/
, an epic 9 out of 10.
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