Raw, Progressive and Heavy. These words are what I would use to describe the new album "Volume II" from NEW LIGHT CHOIR. This is an album that brings an early 90s Black Metal style of grittiness to the Progressive Metal genre and makes it work incredibly well. On first inspection, this album seems like nothing special, congrats it's Prog Metal, now excuse me while I go back to my DREAM THEATER or (modern) OPETH, but that's not it, this is something incredibly authentic.

Aside from what was covered above, we will get back to that soon enough; the lyrics that NEW LIGHT CHOIR offers are more emotional than your average Metal album. Claiming that all he needs is love, "your love" in the second track, "All I Need", the story takes you through a tale of someone with their partner and the stuff they'll say to declare their love for someone. The amazing thing about this album on top of proper emotion is the inspirations you can find throughout. The opening track, "Higher Fire (Proximity)", being rather fast pace offers a rather IMMORTAL style, raw Black Metal riff to kick this album off quickly. While the track "Frost And Fire" is a bit more of a TOXIC HOLOCAUST style Thrash riffage, and while you continue through the album, it's easy to find other inspirations. All through the album, the band brings instrumentals inspired by plenty of other Rock and Metal band and lyrics that can actually bring emotion to the listener, something most Metal bands seem to forget about these days, there are more emotions than just anger.

All throughout this album, NEW LIGHT CHOIR show us that they have something new to show us. They show us that bands can be unique still these days. In a world that quickly fills with bands that want to strive to sound like the masters of their genre, NEW LIGHT CHOIR, specifically with this album "Volume II", shows us that you can be your own band, you can be something new and in this case, new is awesome!<