PAINTERS OF ETHER is a symphonic metal project of Italian-American musician and guitarist Luciano Launius who was able to take training courses to study music which ultimately lead to him meeting other musicians and musical professionals. His time spent performing in various rock/metal arrangements took the musician across northern Italy and his ability to write and arrange pieces gained him notoriety by musicians and other industry professionals at an international level.

This project gave life to an independently released self titled album "Painters Of Ether" which is made up of eight tracks with the intent to "paint" each piece with different shades and styles, making it unique, without ever shying away from the realm of metal. Each track has a number of guests on it providing their own style helping to make all eight tracks unique and for fans of symphonic metal to enjoy.

The albums intro track "Defenders Of Lorenia" sets the tone of this album with a skit style intro with fictional characters from a far away eutopia called "Lorenia" talking about how their perfect planet with clear oceans and a perfect atmosphere is under threat from another planet and how they must defend it, the track is a long one clocking in at twelve minutes, and it involves musicians such as Paolo Perazzani who provided melodic drumming along with Nick Muneratti who held down the bassline which allowed Henning Basse to deliver an incredibly powerful vocal performance to create a well made musical ensemble for fans to enjoy.

The second track on the album "Euterpe" is the albums one of two pre-release singles having been released in July following "The Young Pharisee And The Apprentice" which was released in May, with the album coming at the end of October. It is shortest track on the album clocking in at five and a half minutes which is by no means a short song but when the majority of the album are tracks between six and seven minutes and two of them being over ten minutes in length, five and a half minutes can be seen as short. This track features guests such as Francesco Tresca behind the drum kit, Matteo Galbier holding down the bassline, keyboard duties went to Luca Veronese while vocal duties fell on Fabio Dessi and soprano Silvia Violet Balbo who came together to create a uniquely powerful track to build the excitement for this album prior to it's release.

The final track on this album is titled "The Land Beyond Time" and it is also the albums longest track, exceeding the second longest track by a minute and a half, clocking in at just over thirteen and a half minutes in length. This masterpiece of a track was a great way to end the journey that the listener is taken on throughout the course of this record with Mike Terrana tasked with providing the drums, Mike Lepond bringing the bass and the vocals coming from Giambattista Manenti leaving fans wanting more and excited for the future of this project.

Having listened to this album in it's entirety I can say that fans of symphonic power metal will definitely enjoy it, as I touched on earlier, this album is full of long tracks, with the album as a whole coming in at just over an hour long, and no tracks shorter then five and a half minutes, the opening and closing tracks alone make up twenty five minutes of this album so if you're a fan of longer tracks, this one is for you.