When you are dealing with Metal reviews, a certain degree of cultural knowledge is needed, and will help a lot in many moments. For example, what does the name Palantiri remind you of? If you are introduced to J. R. R. Tolkien universe, you'll find out that they are the rocks (globes, in reality) created by Feanor on Aman, and were taken from Numenor and brought to Middle-Earth by Elendil and his sons. And as it is linked to "The Lord of the Rings" legendarium, many will assume that the Swedish trio PALANTIR is a Heavy/Power Metal band, and this idea is right. But their first album, called "Lost Between Dimensions", uses other themes as well on the lyrics.

Yes, they play a heavy and strong form of Heavy/Power Metal with very good orchestrations and fine work on guitars. The vocals are heavily influenced by Fabio Lione, the rhythmic work is excellent and focused on creating a heavy and strong basis, and even some Epic moments can be heard on the songs. But I must tell you that behind all these elements that we heard many times before, the band shows personality. The sound quality of "Lost Between Dimensions" is very good. It was created to be clean, and in a way that we all can hear all the musical instruments and arrangements. But obviously it is very heavy, with tons of musical weight and some aggressiveness that is not usual to the band's musical genre. So be prepared for some surprises. So we can say that the sonority of the album is a fine work of Cederick Forsberg, the one who mixed and mastered the songs.

The main focus of PALANTIR is not to create some technically exaggerated, but their main idea is to make solid and very good songs. Then we can take the dynamic "To Valhalla" with its excellent guitars and vocals arrangements and fine chorus, the catchy tempos and melodies of "Escaping Reality", the contrast between calm and almost clean moments with aggressive ones on "Revival" (lovely guitars can be heard here), the heavy weight that is presented on the arrangements of "Warriors of the Sun", the fine and tender melodies that fills the heavy and climatic "Centre of My Life", and the long and epic "Lost Between Dimensions" with its charming harmonies as the album's best moments.

They are good, even with some moments that are purely cliché. But I believe that music is to be funny and to fill our hearts with joy. So PALANTIR is a very good choice for it.