Finnish theatrical metal newcomers LOST IN GREY shied the public so far but March 3^rd marked the release of their debut album "The Grey Realms" via NoiseArt Records.

This symphonic metal project tells the story of Lillian, who is running away and gets lost in a place called the Grey Realms. There she meets the rulers, Patrick and Odessa, and though the place seems like paradise at first, she soon becomes disenchanted with it and is forced to deal with the things from which she was fleeing. LOST IN GREY pursues an ambitious concept; especially for a debut album and I could sense that they weren't quite ready for it. The Finns are great musicians; you can't deny that, you can hear the complexity on "Road to Styx" with a mix between EPICA and AMORPHIS, a beautiful choir on "New Horizon" but there are so many approaches that it gives the entire album a feel of separation, something that is not really coagulated.

 "Dark Skies" has a mesmerizing oriental intro that I would have like to be a bit longer, and maybe hear the soft rhythm in the background as well, it disappears too quick I think. With a whooping 12-minutes in length, "The Grey Realms" is the definition of theatrical; it opens up with a gentle vocal intro with light backing instruments and shifts between a 'light' and 'dark' voice. Sometimes too many ideas can be poisonous, and even if all of them seem to be a great, you need to kill your darling to make something feel whole. The sound is inspiring, even the ensemble of different voices is on point, not falling in the 'beauty and the beast' cliché, but I would have like something more uniformed. LOST IN GREY is definitely a band to keep an eye out for; hopefully in the future they will succeed in packaging their ideas better.