Canadian Celtic Metal singer-songwriter Leah McHenry is an inspirational lady. Her impressive 5 album back catalogue (all crowd funded!) would be inspirational enough on its own, but add in the fact that she’s raised and home-schooled five talented children (three of them sing backing vocals on 3rd track ‘Unshakeable’ incidentally) and also has her own successful candle manufacturing business, you sometimes wonder where she finds the time to make such great music. Her unique brand of Celtic Folk influenced Symphonic Metal has attracted a worldwide fan-base, due in no small factor to the effort Leah puts into inviting her fans to feel part of the whole experience. Granted, it’s also because of the superbly arranged, performed and produced music on each release of course. A new Leah album is a bit of an event and always an upbeat, feel-good, optimistic experience.
2019’s excellent “The Quest” really set the bar high with it’s fabulous 10-minute opener, setting the scene for an epic album-long fantasy adventure into Leah’s Symphonic/Folk Metal world. This was actually followed up by a gorgeous winter themed folk rock album (one of the classiest “Christmas” albums you’re ever likely to hear), which wasn’t really meant to be the musical follow-up to “The Quest”, so “The Glory and the Fallen” is really the next step for Leah’s Metal persona. The sheer quality of Leah’s albums have always managed to attract notable guest appearances, and this one is no exception. Ex-Delain man Timo Somers handles the guitar and bass this time around, with his former bandmate Sander Zoer performing drum duties. Even Mark Jansen of Epica fame contributes harsh vocals to a couple of tracks.
Song-wise, the album nudges more towards classy Symphonic Metal than the slightly folkier “The Quest”, plus there’s no epic length tracks this time around, instead the twelve expertly arranged songs weigh in around the four to six-minute mark, with each one taking the listener on a different fantastical voyage. It almost seems wrong to get so far through a review before mentioning Leah’s beautiful vocals, but that’s mainly because most people already accept and expect her silky-smooth tones to be just as good as they are on this album. This is an album stitched intricately together with intelligent, focal-point vocal lines, steering the listener gently towards a plethora of memorable choruses. Leah doesn’t go in for operatics and such-like – she doesn’t need to, she always delivers her vocal lines in such an instantly recognisable, professional, polished way, that the initial attention for long-term fans is probably more about her song-writing on the new album…which once more is top quality.
The touches of folk are still present in the impactful vocal lines, but maybe more subtle than previously within the music, which makes moments like those within the fabulously varied ‘Sleeping Giant’ all the more sweeter when they do break through. Somers and Zoer are excellent throughout, with the added orchestration building atmosphere and adding further depth to each arrangement – courtesy of Oliver Philipps, who does a wonderful job on the production too, enhancing every song expertly. Due to Leah’s maturity in song-writing and possibly alongside Somers Delain-esque influence, this is a very cohesive album, with many songs based around mid-paced melodic time-signatures, giving moments when a song strays from this even further impact. On the whole, there’s no denying that this album is another Celtic influenced, Folk-tinged Symphonic Metal gem to add to the already hugely impressive Leah catalogue.
(8.5/10 Andy Barker)
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