Leverage’s melodic starship ventures on, making a third stop with this quite nice “Circus Colossus”, once more for Spinefarm Records. The Finnish metallers (and I am marginally using the term since the sound colors of the band contain a balanced mixture of a keyboard driven melodic Power Metal and a prominent pomp/symphonic Rock or even AOR feel)prove to be consistent into creating a well performed and cleverly filtered music, with which we were already familiar from their previous work and by the proven composing capabilities of their leaders Tuomas Heikkinen (guitars) and Pekka Lampinen (bass).

Surpassing the, barren at times, reef of plain reference to sonic coordinates, it is  wise to collect information for the true followers of Leverage for the 4-5 years of their existence. In a few words, if you turned your head in interest for their debut “Tides” (2005) and bowed to their crucial second album’s “Blind Fire” (2008) grandeur, you will probably not stop smiling realizing the quality of “Circus Colossus”.  The actual presence of the band in this CD is enriched by a compositional integrity, a flawless instrumentation and scaling capability (in fact there is not even one song to sound out of order or inconsistent) while the listening flow is far from tiring for the average Leverage fan.

Opening up the circle of information as far as “Circus Colossus” is concerned, so that non-Leverage music fans can follow, it would be wise to note that the style of this Finnish six-piece band has all the credentials that make a Finnish and Scandinavian bands in general well known globally. Ambient and melodic voice lines (and polyphonies), pompous but masterfully comprised use of keyboards, resourceful mixture of melodic Rock and metal culture sub-genres and a theatricality not put as a purpose but coinciding with the band’s music motif. You need names? Royal Hunt, Brother Firetribe (Pekka Heino’s other project), Edguy, Narnia, Yngwie Malmsteen even Survivor are names capable of painting a draft picture, while one should not miss Leverage’s capability to adjust their music (especially the symphonic parts) in order to potentially refer to action or futuristic film soundtracks.

So, is Circus Colossus a perfect album? Does it contain tracks that will make you play your CD to meltdown and will it keep up in the playlists of Rock Clubs for a while? It’s hard to say and thus the non-reference to a single “hit” (with thepossible exception of “Movie Gods” and “Rider of Storm”, ah, maybe also the “Revelation”) that would lead this album to a total success. Whatever the case is, though, this new Leverage work has the credentials to do better that their first two attempts, since it sounds (at least to me) as their most complete release to this day. I feel that fans of this genre will be glad to put their money on this.