Review
We live in a time of abundance. In the late 90s, things were very different. Everything is much easier when you have connection speeds of 100Mbits and upwards but in the late 90's if you had one US Robotics 56k modem with dial up things were very different. Most people didn't even have that. Of course I'm talking about the reality in Brazil where I lived back then.
I don't remember exactly how I got to know SunBlaze cause I was always hanging out in different mIRC channels, Geocities and eGroups (before Yahoo bought the service). Those were "hard" but exciting times. I basically knew Iron Maiden, Metallica, Megadeth, Helloween, Angra and some other "mainstream" bands but I was always looking out for more.
Illuminating Heights was released in 1997 but I'm pretty sure I didn't find out about it before 1999. MP3 was already a thing since a few years back but most of those discoveries were made through Real Audio files so even if you could listen to the song (in most cases only parts) you couldn't really hear all the depth of it. All I remember was I got access to some excerpts of those two songs and silly 17/18 years old me would listen to it on and on. Many years later when we finally got ADSL and Youtube came along I was able to find ONE ENTIRE song. Determination kept me going, hoping that one day I'd get a hold of this album. Today’s generation will probably never understand that kind of struggle—and maybe that is a good thing but it wasn't until 2008 (10 whole years later) when I moved to Sweden that I got in touch with Jörg Enke (what a fine gentleman!) in Germany that I was able to purchase the album. That was when the real journey beganUnfortunately the album is not available in Spotify but a quick search resulted in finding the whole EP at Youtube.
Some music cannot simply be described—it has to be lived. The experience here transplants me to a mystical place. I would say Antiquity but to be more specific I feel like I'm in a Conan movie navigating through desolate places, life is scarce but hope pushes you forward.
The Album
Along the way (the Sunblaze track) you get to live different things. Maybe a mysterious encounter, maybe a battle (not in a Rhapsody Of Fire/Luca Turilli's way). These songs—perhaps because of their symphonic progressive metal nature — have more depth. The violins (brilliantly laid out by Elisabeth Ramirez) also give the song another layer that feels almost spiritual. The lyrics also help build the image of a saga and we all know that time is relative but I don't think I've even had shorter 14 minutes in my life.
Even though I love Matthias Pfaff's voice and the way it brings so much feeling to the song, I can't really pick one single member who stands out the most because they all work together to build a work of art. The image I get while browsing the booklet is that they all have a job in a German symphony orchestra.
Some albums are good. Others are so unique they leave permanent marks on your spirit, unlike any other record.
Final Verdict
It's a shame this is only one EP. The band split up afterwards but I really would love to hear a full album because those musicians had a lot more to say musically.
Opinion
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