Perennial Quest – Warriors Through Endless Time (Self-Released)

Wednesday, 20th December 2017
Rating: 9/10

Gaining a moniker from the Symbolic album from Death, Massachusetts act Perennial Quest began in 2015 and have made quite an impression across the New England local metal circuit for their potent brand of explosive progressive-oriented power metal. Featuring within the ranks multiple guitarists and keyboard possibilities that enhance the bombast and shredding capabilities for the songs, Warriors Through Endless Time as their debut demo doesn’t hold anything back in raising the bar for epic, larger than life material that features higher register melodies, longer instrumental passages, and speedy interplay that lives for power and glory.

Naturally the lyrical content has many fantasy and battle-laden themes that this style gravitates towards – the title cut for instance contains visions like ‘ignites the sun/with our blades by our side we fly towards the sky’ as the guitar salvos from Andrew Matarazzo, Sam Jewell, and Krys Hayward ramp up at accelerated Dragonforce meets Skull Fist in a blackened alley paces. When the band choose to slow things down to a more mid-tempo template, there’s a progressive quality to their phrasing that brings more of an emotive side to the proceedings – especially prevalent for “Lone Lost Sparrow” or the mid-section for “Beast of the Prophecy” where vocalist Tony DiBiase carefully measures his melodies against some of the acoustic supplementation before the twin guitar harmonies allow him to hit those bird-call highs. Even with the splendid, grandiose speed axe acrobatics abound, there’s an underpinning of memorability to the songs which isn’t easy to achieve when you are going above 200-250 BPM – but “Angel of Fortune” has that endearing quality due to Tony’s rapid fire, forceful delivery against the push and pull of riffing and Kevin Ordway’s shape shifting drum tempo juggling.

New England natives should feel fortunate that we have diverse bands that display the many facets of power metal – Armory and Thunderforge two of the most well-known of the new breed. In six songs and 45 minutes, Warriors Through Endless Time should place Perennial Quest in that newcomer of the year category, especially for those that love epic power and progressive metal that possesses fire and brimstone, verve and bombast, enveloping the listener to become a part of the journey in a sing-a-long fashion.

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