HANDS OF ORLAC's new album, "Figli Del Crepuscolo", is what I like to think of as "patient" music. What I mean by that is that the band members know how to time their instruments so that they all gel well together, and that they know the value of missing certain beats or letting silence fill a place in the song. They're also not afraid of using the whole fretboard on their guitars like a lot of Metal musicians seem to be, and as a result are much more tuneful and varied than many of their counterparts within the genre.

They begin their newest release with an electronic, ambient track that's very trippy and surreal. I'm not often a fan of this type of track as it sometimes cheapens the record and comes across as filler, however, if they are used, they almost always sound better when placed at the beginning of the album so that they don't break the momentum of the music. In this case, "I Figli Del Crepuscolo" works well and leads nicely into "Last Fatal Drop", which is one of the better songs of the album. While the ambient windy noise from the previous track continues in the background, The Sorceress treats us to some enchanting vocals that for some reason seem reminiscent of an evil Disney queen and do work fairly well, despite being unintelligible to me, as a non-Italian speaker.

The band's control over the music is demonstrated in the odd time signature of "Burning", which misses out on a number of expected beats, and sounds better for it. The guitar itself plays a tune that sounds something like a sea shanty, and brings a jovial feel to the song, despite its name. "A Coin In The Water" is the standout track, with a sinister spoken intro and a riff that gallops along at a fantastic pace throughout, sounding a lot like IRON MAIDEN in that respect.

"A Ghost Story" is the dullest track on the album, with not much happening at all right up until the 5-minute mark when the dueling guitars and old-school rock'n'roll solo kicks in. This outro is great, but it does make the tremendously long build-up to it seem pointless, too.

This is a decent album overall, and feels especially long for only 7 tracks due to most of them clocking in just shy of 8 minutes. There's a lot of bang for your buck here, and the musicianship is of good quality and is different enough to hold your attention for a while. However there's something about the album that I can't quite put my finger on which prevents me from falling in love with it; whether it's the slightly under-cooked vocals, the sheer length of most of the tracks, or the repetitive guitars through a lot of it I don't know, but this is still worth a look if you have an interest in the Metal scene brewing elsewhere in Europe.<