MAGNUS KARLSSON’S FREE FALL – Hunt the Flame

Magnus Karlsson (Primal Fear) is undoubtedly a gifted musician and an experienced songwriter with a knack for crafting huge-sounding, epic, and positively bombastic tunes with a symphonic edge to them. This pretty much applies to every band and project of his, not least the interesting Free Fall endeavor whose previous LP entitled We Are the Night (2020) I enjoyed quite a lot. Hunt the Flame is the logical successor to this one from a musical, lyrical, and stylistic standpoint, which is no bad thing, and Karlsson has once again assembled an impressive crew of singers to help him out in the vocal department. Employing different voices throughout adds some nice flavors and diversity to the material, but although the songs are generally rather robust and well-composed, a few of them lack identity, charisma, and longevity, which results in the record losing its momentum now and then. Still, the positives most certainly outweigh the negatives, and this is generally a good and ambitious piece of work that fans of power metal and punchy symphonic metal ought to explore. Its highlights are the final two tracks on the album, namely ‘Demons of our Time’ and ‘Summoning the Stars’ – both of which are perfectly dramatic and memorable – but ‘Holy Ground’ and ‘Thunder Calls’ are bloody good and downright muscular slices of hard-hitting heavy metal grandeur too.