"Hollow's Gathering" is the third episode of the Metal Opera saga, initiated by Heleno Vale  under the name of SOULSPELL. As always the casting of singers & musicians involved is blistering, jaw dropping and mind blowing. Some international celebrities are also featured here as guest-star like Tim "Ripper" Owens, Mike Vescera or Blaze Bailey. The music as expected is very much in the same vein as the previous SOULSPELL's albums: epic melodic Power Metal like AVANTASIA or AINA, even with more focused on the storytelling concept with each character exclusively represented by a guest singer in particular. It seems to have been a monster work to keep all those people, from around the world, performing as a team and possibly an even more strong task to keep a certain unity in the interpretation. It's not easy either for the listener to assimilate the album at first, it takes some spins to fully integrate all those complex elements and to figure it out clearly. It also takes some more listening séances to be fully captivated and addicted but let's face it that this is inevitable because of the obvious quality, the richness and the smartness that flow out of the CD: "Hollow's Gathering" finally will grab your mind, sooner or later.

The technical side is remarkable & flawless, indeed some of the best specialists from all over the planet were recruited for this Pharaonic project: Tito Falaschi (brother of ANGRA's vocalist and founder of the legendary band SYMBOLS) as producer / Matt Smith (THEOCRACY's mastermind) as the mixing engineer or Miro aka Michael Rodenberg (AVANTASIA / AINA / KAMELOT / RHAPSODY / ANGRA / HARTMANN / SIEGES EVEN etc...) for the mastering job.

The artistic side is as anticipated is awesome, the singers are quite challenging with each other on bringing more emotion, more determination, more power again & again than the next one. Beside the stars that made their stuff in their great fashion, the vocalists / characters who are the most impressive are the usual suspects aka the great Brazilian high pitched screamers: Timo aka Mario Pastore (PASTORE), by the way you can find my review of the second album "The End Of Our Flames" of his band on the website, truly excellent and very recommended album, Amon aka Iuri Sanson (HIBRIA), Hollow The Dragon aka Carlos Zema (EMPIRES OF EDEN / DSG / ex-VOUGAN) and Samael aka Nando Fernandez (ex-HANGAR), They all excel in the now famous TTT aka testoteronik-tenor-tricks. The best (by far) female performance is provided by the juvenile but quite touching Judith aka Daisa Munhoz (VANDROYA) in some kind of Pamela Moore high sibilance. Special mentioning for the young singer Jefferson Albert who interpret brilliantly the character of Padyal ,and who was the winner of a competition, the first prize being the contribution to the recording sessions of the third section of this inextinguishable bombastic and mythological tales, one of the best set to Metal music.