Review Summary: Another tight Hällas album that somehow gets them even more melodramatic
While Hällas’s brand of pomp-prog has always had a degree of spectacle behind it, their fourth album might be their most ambitious yet. Even if you took the opening twenty-one minute epic out of consideration, Panorama features some of the group’s most extravagant musicianship to date. The synths in particular feel more pronounced than usual, giving the proceedings a more symphonic undercurrent, though the guitars still provide plenty of their own power.
Of course, said opener (“Above The Continuum”) is the most obvious instance of this mindset in action. Its dense layout across a multi-movement suite dwarfs anything else the band has done before in terms of scope, yet pulls from enough of their varying facets to still feel in character. It’s a fun enough start with a borderline disco beat fading in and only made wilder by the fanfare of vocals sung in Italian. I’m also partial to the synth segment slowing the momentum after a couple faster verses and the spoken segment that provides a pastoral sensibility.
Thankfully this isn’t one of those prog albums where the sprawling long number doesn’t overshadow the others. On the contrary, “Face Of An Angel” makes a strong case as one of the band’s catchiest bops, honing in even more on pop appeal with a bouncy beat and catchy vocal lines amidst the occasional hokey sound effect. “Bestiaus” and the closing “At The Summit” offer some lovely contrasts, the former setting up piano-led meditations and cinematic soundscapes that bleed into the latter before some explosive gallops and swelling organs come bursting in.
Overall, Panorama is another tight Hällas album that accomplishes the feat of somehow getting even more melodramatic. While it doesn’t differ too drastically from what they’ve done before, offering accessible prog in forty-ish minutes, the ways the tracks get structured comes out refreshing. There’s a sense of the band taking what they’ve learned so far while raising the stakes to what could be something even more massive. It’s another quality effort sure to satisfy fans and sets up a strong precedent for prog in the new year.
