Four years after their last album "Dominate” Adagio return with their new full-length album. "Archangels In Black" is the fourth album of the power / progressive metal band from France, and marks significant changes in line-up and in the sound of the band.

The singer of the band in "Dominate" Gus Monsanto left to join Revolution Renaissance and the gap behind the microphone covers the Finnish Christian Palin. As it regards the style of the album the band retains its power and progressive metal style adding some aggressive and heavy elements.

More specifically, the rhythm guitar parts are very offensive and contain several times thrash elements, we have merciless blast beats from the drummer and the singer besides the clean vocals is using several times growls. The members who mainly give the power / progressive element is the lead guitarist (and founder of Adagio) Stefan Forte and the keyboards with their melodic riffs and solos. The result is a very good and interesting record. Christian Palin is quite good at vocals and leaves a positive impression. Special references deserve Stefan Forte (Lead guitar) and Kevin Codfert (Keyboards) who cooperate very well in the solos with perfect alternations between them. The solos in all the songs are very good, combining  technique and musicality, with the two above giving a recital. Of course there is room for improvement especially in the rhythm parts and melody of the voice cause in many songs what stings the interest is the elaborate solo and not the song as a whole. The songs that stand out in my view are "Vampyri", "Fear Circus", "Undead" and "Archangels In Black". Also in the positive is the very good cover artwork by Guilherme Sevens and the good sound with the familiar from his works with Rammstein, Meshuggah etc. Bjorn Engelman in mastering of the disc.

In general, the disc flows pleasantly and leaves positive impressions having some very good moments. It is an album that deserves the attention of fans of this kind of music and especially those looking for something more aggressive and extreme. I am looking forward for their next disc.