KONQUEST is a one-man band, where founder Alex Rossi does everything, and I mean everything on this album. Formed in 2019 from the majestic city of Tuscany, Italy with the debut release in 2021 of "The Night Goes On" and quickly followed up with the highly anticipated sophomore release on October 14, 2022 of "Time and Tyranny". Rossi plays all the instruments, wrote all the songs, and performs all the studio mixing to boot. KONQUEST preformed as a band for the first time at the Up The Hammers Festival in Athens, Greece in June 2022. Rossi credits musical influences from THIN LIZZY, TANK, IRON MAIDEN and SAXON, all while maintaining his personal style and diversity. I'll wait on tagging Rossi with the "virtuoso" label and scheduling the ticker tape parade until I dig into this one-man work of musical wizardry.

Opening with a brief, lively guitar instrumental on "Relativity" is a galloping tempo with a nice bass and drum groove that leads into the title track "Time and Tyranny", soft keys and orchestral strings create a sensual atmosphere of anticipation blasting into fast, turbo riffs bundled together with feverish vocals accelerating to a nice, classic solo and impactful lyrics "The minutes passed by, they left no breath, they leave the evil seed, left us to try to face the death, this is tyranny". Two songs hardly tell the entire story, the album has a real classic metal vibe, but I sense Rossi is determined to keep it heavy while creating a divergent ambience of his own infuse of style and taste which is showcased in a true kick-ass song "The Light That Fades  Away" opening with a melodic, subdued guitar backed by velvety keys and percussion sustained by toned down vocals delivering an imposing, solemn journey  to the dark side ending with  extreme, epic guitar solo, a monster song, my favorite on the album. "The Traveller" is the one song that resembles another band with its mid-tempo, crushing riffs and even the vocal styling resonates IRON MAIDEN. Closing the album out with an eight-minute venture "Warrior" starts out mundane with lighter vocals and restrained, twisting tempo eventually blossoms into heavy power cords and full throttle riffing, that sadly ended too soon.

This is a masterful album created by a one-man wrecking machine. Strong hooks, dynamic guitar, both riffs and solos, solid and bold backing drums and bass, a nicely balanced sound, all fused together with no musical elements or vocals overpowering each other, it's like the band all share the same brain....oh yeah, they do.
BTW, Mr. Virtuoso, the parade is scheduled for next week,