Almost two decades full of devotion toward heavy metal are focused in the debut album of BLACK HORIZON.

The introduction sets the conceptuality of the album although the songs are coming from a wide specter of time and their lyrics have no common topic. The dynamic opener throws us into classic heavy metal. The third track calms down the tempo and colors the music with progressive elements. Although its significant playing time “The Choice” swallows us with a wealth of approaches and means of expression. Fast songs (the second and the ninth), slow songs (the third and the eight) and mostly varied (the fourth and the seventh) are decorated with melody (the tenth), pleasant polyphonies (the fifth) and goose-step rhythms (the ninth). The ballad (sixth song) is entirely in the possession of heavy metal – tender pure intensions alternate with power ones. The song in French sounds brilliant (the seventh one). Progressive metal sound sneaks everywhere but goes to the top in the third and the eight tracks.

BLACK HORIZON do not use keyboards in their music, so there are no sparks of hard rock here. The well-arranged vocals have frequently a crying expression which is not typical for this gender and which builds another bridge to progressive metal. The diamond of the release for me is “On the Battlefield”! This song as well as the whole album as a quality does not defer to the latest releases of JUDAS PRIEST and VIRGIN STEELE. Even more that “The Choice” is mixed by Achim Koehler (PRIMAL FEAR, EDGUY). The Frenchmen in gender option touch mostly VANDEN PLAS! After the instrumental “Aurora” (eleventh song) a hidden outro track returns us to the intro and confirms the fairy-psychedelic mixture from heavy and prog metal.

The logos of some music labels stand under this mature album. They should notice BLACK HORIZON earlier. The cover artwork is rather reasonable but its performance should be better! The worst is that - it is rather doubtful that the band should delight us with a new album of such a high quality in the near future. But I will wait!!!