Before I start this review let me guide you through time to the year 1998, when Vision Divine were born by Olaf Thörsen, former Labyrinth guitarist, and Fabio Leone (Rhapsody).
The band name is a composition of Labyrinth's original name Vision and the title Olaf wanted to give to his first solo album, Divine. What was supposed to be a solo project soon turned into a real band.
During their first three years of existence, the band released two albums, Vision Divine and Send Me An Angel. In 2003 the band wrote material for their third album, when unfortunately Fabio started having problems regarding the coexistence of his career and band related duties. A new singer was found in the person of Michele Luppi. With a brand new line-up and renewed ambitions, the band started preparing the promotion of Stream of Consciousness and got ready for more live action.
I have to say this is one of the most beautiful releases I've heard for a long time. We are talking about a concept album and the story is just fascinating. The technical constitution concerning the band member's instruments is over the top and you can't find a blemish to their way of acting. Somehow these guys found a way to make guitars, drums, bass and keyboards come to life, in perfect balance with Michele's voice. The listener, by closing his eyes, gets deluged by hundreds of images flowing in his mind... strange, but true.
The album starts in a cell of an Asylum. A madman recognizes the song from a guard's radio and starts singing and recalls in a flashback the facts that led him from his normal life to his state of madness and insanity. The flashback begins with The Secret of Life and Colours Of My World, where the madman starts talking about his morbid and insatiable curiosity; he always wanted to discover the real meaning of life. Lost in this quest through his inner self, he felt the whole world slipping around him.
In The Light comes next, the frustration for not finding a reason to live and the anxiety to get closer to his aim push him towards a decision: suicide. When his soul starts abandoning his body, he sees a light and in there, there's an angel telling him that his time has not come yet. He will be sent back, but soon we will finally have what he's been so strongly searching for. With The Fallen Feather comes his Guardian Angel, ready to guide him across the door that hides the deepest of all secrets and that normally never opens to anybody before death.
An amazing track follows, La Vita Fugge. What makes this chapter unique is it's Italian lyrics which offer us an amazing performance. The trip has started and in a moment of lucidity, coming back from that holy door, he still feels that the truth has not been revealed entirely and now he feels the weight of a fading time. The Guardian Angel appears to him once again in Versions Of The Same. He's ready to help him, because that's his duty. He warns the man anyway: what he's looking for is too big and impossible to be understood from a Human being, that surely has not been made to know.
Reaching Through The Eyes Of God, we're at the Zenith of the trip. Finally here's the moment awaited for a whole life-time: now he can drink from the supreme Fountain, he can eat the fruit of Knowledge! Finally he will know... the truth is there, and he will see through the eyes of God, seeing what HE sees, feeling what HE feels. The river of emotions is haunting him in Shades, taking possesion of his body and of his Soul. In follower We Are, We Are Not he understands the reason why human beings are not allowed to know: Because a human mind with a Physic and natural limit cannot comprehend the entire meaning of Infinity.
Some instrumental tracks follow from the point where madness starts taking possession of his mind and the last contact with reality has fallen. Now he's fallen completely into a deeper madness. Identities, is the last song of this masterpiece and that's actually the epilogue. That's the end of the flashback. Sitting in an empty corner, in this empty room, nothing's left but madness and his Angel, that's still with him and IN him: two identities melted down in one, or maybe in nothing.
Ok I might be a little more enthusiastic than I initially thought but listen to me carefully: this album's worth to be in YOUR disk box. If I didn't manage to attract your curiosity with this overwhelming story then I don't know, perhaps I am not a good narrator. The production is extremely good and the band sounds like playing together for almost 20 years. I really can't find something not good enough in this upcoming release. It seems like it's blasted me away and tell you something? It did. Give those guys a chance, they're really worth it. Excellent job!! Well-done boys.
Release date : May 3rd, 2004