One of the great things about Heavy Metal music is that you can get a bit of just about anything to tickle your fancy. From the deepest and darkest of Satanic Black Metal and Pagan Metal, with anti-religious themes, to the bright light of Christian Metal, perhaps popularized best by STRYPER in the 1980's. Though much of the themes in Metal music deal with religion, it isn't that often that you come across one that is pro-religion. But that is what we have today. Symphonic Power Metal band CHOIRS OF VERITAS present their debut full length album here, which contains twelve tracks.

From their Facebook page, "CHOIRS OF VERITAS is a Christian Metal project that literally means "Choirs Of Truth", to symbolize the union between music and the spiritual truth attributable to Jesus Christ. "I Am the Way, the Truth and the Life" [John 14.6] The project is born from Davide Scuteri's mind, keyboardist and composer, principally as offer to God, due to a personal need to thank Him for the wonderful gift of music. The purpose is to unite the love for God and metal music, fighting stereotypes assuming the choice to follow a Christian way of life automatically means closing our minds, and that playing metal music equals to a prayer to the devil."

The one-minute instrumental into "God First" is a piano driven song with background ambiance. The sound is bright and clean, seguing into "Ask Him." Schaivi's vocals are a high tenor and the mid-tempo song has a heavy key and piano presence. Most of the chords are based on major notes so it sounds positive and upbeat. With Scuteri being the main composer there is no doubt that a keyboard solo flies first before a lead guitar solo. It's a great track overall. The keys in "The Searching" sound like bells chiming high above. It's a slightly faster song with Power Metal leanings and high range female vocals augmenting the main vocals.  One again the keyboards really dominate the overall sound. "Vanitas Vanitatum" means "vanity of vanities, futility (frequently as an exclamation of disillusionment or pessimism). The phrase is late Latin and comes from the Vulgate translation of Ecclesiastes 1:2." It's the vocals that shine best in this song, with keyboards that sound like a church organ, filling the sanctuary completely.

"Religiosity" is an ode to their creator. Dual harmonies in the vocals reach above the bed of keys that provide the main sound. Sanna's lead vocals are unbelievable high and rich with the vibrato of an opera singer. It's a slower song with a flair for drama. "A New Commandment" sports the flutist Baglioni providing the opening melody and some additional parts throughout. Keys and vocals are the main presence in a mid-tempo song, with another highly skilled keyboard solo that will send chills down your spine. "He has come to Forgive" is a ballad of sorts, a slow moving song with a lot of emotional quality. The vocals are in a lower range for much of the track, save for the high female parts, and there is little to no presence from guitar and bass. On a twelve track album where most of the songs are the same length, it's hard to keep some of the tracks from running together. Unfortunately we have some of that here.  A slightly fewer number of songs or some tempo and length variations could have done the album justice. I never thought I would also add, as a lover of piano and keyboards, that they were just a bit much in terms of how much they dominated the landscape. As it is, it is a good album with a lot of musicianship and a positive message.