After successfully inaugurating ‘Welcome to the Absurd Circus’ in 2021, Labyrinth have constructed another maze for the public to navigate through in January 2025. As has been the case since their beginning, they increase in musical difficulty with every new one. In the Vanishing Echoes of Goodbye might just be the mother of all though, as trying to find your way is like being trapped inside The Tower of Babel. So, if you come out fully sane, treat it as if you just won the lottery.
The 2020s decade has been nothing short of chaotic and eventful and as we hit its halfway mark, our planet’s future remains on a knife edge with no sign of peace on the horizon. Taking full advantage of what’s happening around us, Labyrinth expressed how this period has inspired them to be free as artists and take creative risks without any hesitation while being boxed into a specific sub-genre. The band states; “With this album, we set out to achieve total freedom, allowing each of us to fully express ourselves”.
Opening track ‘Welcome Twilight’ gives no breathing space at all as a drum fill quickly gives way to a thunderous intro full of pulsating guitars and piercing synths in 6/8 before suddenly changing into 4/4. It might only be the first song but it’s clear that Labyrinth aren’t going to hold back and not even the toughest bouncers can stop them. Roberto Tiranti couldn’t be a better pick for a vocalist expressing the album’s key themes as his dramatic style resonates heavily with the time that we’re living in. You can feel the passion in his voice whenever he belts falsetto notes capable of scratching one’s eardrums, not to mention a Latin choir of doom yelling “SI VIS PACEM PARA BELLUM” (if we want peace, we must prepare for war). That itself is already potent enough to sink you to your knees in desperation as you can only brace for impact while an inevitable apocalypse approaches.
Guitarists Andrea Cantarelli and Olaf Thorsen join forces in releasing bottled anger as we feel the wrath of their skull-crushing riffs and solos. For over 30 years, the pair of them have been running the show with ultra-complicated licks and tricks top players have nightmares about not rivalling. Drummer Matt Peruzzi meanwhile sets the example as to why others should follow his lead with extraordinary fills, double kick and coordination that makes prog power metal an enjoyable genre when executed at the highest of standards.
The way in which ‘Welcome Twilight’ ends identically to the start after long periods of madness in common time signatures cleverly represents how uncertainty is such a prevalent feeling during times where no one knows if we’ll live to see another day. The video itself features Labyrinth playing in an underground sewage with AI made aerial footage of city landscapes possibly depicting the false narrative we’re living under where what we see in metropolitan areas is nothing but a disguise as to what’s happening down below us, hence the drain being a figure of a filthy reality. It eventually finishes with that same city in ruins destroyed by a nuke which acts as a grim reminder of how easily human ego makes them destroy their own creations.
Lyrics explain how humanity has come out of the pandemic worse than before and that our freedom is in the wrong hands. During this dark period, populism grew and we were brainwashed with fear and conspiracy theories “Brains infected with well-directed fears, they are leading us towards new wars”. The accentuated repetition of the Latin phrase “SI VIS PACEM, PARA BELLUM” mentioned before is nothing new to us because no peace has ever been achieved without bloodshed.
‘Accept the Changes’ continues the onslaught, full of electrifying beats, soaring vocals, crazy shredding and riffs hitting so hard that you’ll have a migraine from headbanging excessively. This is where Labyrinth start unveiling preserved magic gradually as their ability to mess with our emotions shines through with unexpected dynamic changes, diminished chords, clean guitar tones and keyboard sound effects. For instance, pre-chorus bridges go from all-out aggressive to suddenly soothing whereby Matt plays softly using a sidestick technique and Oleg switches to samples mimicking cricket trills, resulting in feelings of disillusion and excitement at the same time.
‘Out of Place’ is where things start to get a bit more interesting and In the Vanishing Echoes of Goodbye’s message gets closer to its core. Roberto Tiranti describes how the song is a reflection of his current state of mind in today’s world in which he feels that music is the only thing he can still resonate with because everything else is alien and unrecognisable “We no longer recognise the world for what it was and sometimes we struggle to recognize ourselves”. When you listen to it, you can understand precisely what he means because Labyrinth have done a spectacular job of marrying sounds with meaning and imagination.
But not only is that down to artistic merit sonically speaking, it’s also choosing audio engineers who can mix a record that aligns final product quality with its key message. Thanks to them, all instruments are distinguishable and you’re able to share the same thoughts that went through band members’ minds as if you were there during the recording process.
Previously, Labyrinth mentioned how they wanted to be totally free without being confined to a style and Roberto has definitely stuck to that promise. He’s let his soul fly away like releasing a wounded animal back into the wild by stretching his range to the absolute limit. What were once vicious cries of discontent have faded into desperation and hopelessness as we get to hear a new side of him for the first time. Weak, strained phrasing shows how much pain he feels, being lost without an identity and it’s impossible to not feel touched.
However, it’s not just him who can move us, as the rest of the band excel in sucking listeners into reliving their experiences. Frequent fluctuations between major and minor scales along with tempo changes are an accurate representation of the many phases you go through when feeling ‘out of place’. Such transitions display confusion of not knowing what to feel in times of a crisis while temporary acceleration mirrors panic mode when overwhelmed.
Until ‘The Healing’, Labyrinth give listeners enough rope to hang onto for what’s coming their way but the tables have now turned and their desire to be free gets the better of them. What you think acts like a cooling break before heading into round two is just the first of a series of booby traps laid out by the band to prove that Into the Vanishing Echoes of Goodbye is anything but plain sailing. The verses are quite calm with comfortable vibes consisting of acoustic guitars and ambient synths as if you were meditating in a jungle only to then change tempo for 90 seconds and jump back into a solo in its original form. In a way, this song subtly indicates that Earth can heal only so many times because if you underestimate her, she’ll bite back.
While Labyrinth have been very direct in the main theme they want to evoke, don’t be fooled as this album isn’t easy to break down like digestive biscuits. Each song is wrapped in multiple layers similar to a tiramisu and listening to them more than once in a quiet environment with good streaming services is recommended. The cover itself is already striking and gives a bleak indication of what our planet could very well look like should we continue heading down a destructive path. An eroded symbol in a dark, barren wasteland with only a few trees standing and a crow could picture a brutal aftermath of climate change, wars or even another pandemic.
‘To the Son I Never Had’ and ‘Inhuman Race’ bring Into the Vanishing Echoes of Goodbye to a close with Labyrinth pulling out one last lethal trick from under their sleeves. It’s at this point where tiredness kicks in and bands want to truly test whether you’ve been awake all this time and enjoyed what you heard. Again, it’s the same elements of surprise to throw listeners off but this time it’s different. These tunes have a hallucinating feel to them by using more major scales than usual as well as a cheeky addition of sci-fi sound effects in random parts as if you were travelling in space.
‘To the Son I Never Had’ is a ballad that lives up to its name in which time just seems to drag on as a result of losing hope whereas ‘Inhuman Race’ gives off a futuristic sensation with a news broadcast mentioning Russian forces getting access to a combat vehicle supplied with intelligence instead of brutal force. It’s a somewhat ambiguous ending to a rollercoaster of a record leaving a giant question mark hanging over our heads as to whether AI could possibly decide our fate.
Labyrinth have delivered exactly what they promised and if this is what they can do without any boundaries, then we best brace ourselves for what could be a bombardment of mouth-watering albums to come.
In The Vanishing Echoes of Goodbye comes out on January 24 2025 via Frontiers Records.
