Since BATHORY released "Hammerheart" back in 1990, the Metal world never was the same again. It was the beginning of Pagan Metal era, that had an great explosion at the beginning of the last decade, when a lot of Metal bands with pagan themes appeared, and them, they took the Pagan / Folk stuff a step ahead, with the introduction of old instruments inside Metal. And it was good, creating new forms of Metal music. And one fine band is the Italian one man band HESPERIA, with their new album, "Spiritvs Italicvs: Aeneidos Metalli Apotheosis pars III". And it's a thunder to the ears, as it warms up the heart of Italian people and their descendants (as me, a grandson of Italians).

It's heavy, harsh and aggressive, but with some atmospheric heathen moments that really talk to our hearts, with some fantastic pagan melodies. The band uses an approach with long songs that really embraces the listener. Harsh voices and some clean ones, great guitar riffs, bass and drums going into a more heavily rhythmic basis, and a lot of special effects that acclimated the work. And it's wonderful.

The sound production is somewhat nasty, and really could be better, but if we clean it entirely, their work would be damaged. You can't hear their music clear and strong with no difficulties at all. And the artwork is a good picture of Hesperus with Italian flag in his hands.

As said above, the band's songs are very long (the sort one are intros), so you'll hear great musical diversity into one song, and all of them use the same approach: long, with great variations of rhythm. And all of them are fine, with their greater moments in "Spiritvs Patris", the wonderful "Italica", the fascinating "Spiritvs Italicvs I" and "Spiritvs Italicvs II", and "Postludium: Ad Metallvm Italicvm".

Wonderful is not enough to describe the feeling I had listening to the album.