The album starts with a nice intro in which you can imagine to enter a strange circus with the host spreading the welcome words. When the first song ‘The Black Circus’ kicks in I hear dual vocals like in System of a Down while the ultra fast drums and long guitar solo’s are telling you we’re indeed dealing with power metal here.
 

Throughout the entire album, Manticora uses a lot of interludes which are really nice to get into the story. Although that actually is pretty hard without the lyrics. The absolute firework starts when ‘Gypsies’ Dance pt. I’ starts. It’s an incredible multi-dimensional song with many interesting twists, and my god, what an absolute incredible fast and insane drummer. It’s been a long time since I was so impressed by a musician I did not know off on the forehand.
 

Compared to the previous work of Manticora, this album is a bit more of everything they’ve been so far. Front man Larsen is singing more intense in both the energetic and calm musical parts while the guitars take care of a decent and interesting tour through the story. The drummer I already mentioned, he is that little extra you’re looking for when you’re taking a look on a band you’re not familiar with.
 

This is the first part of the story about the Black Circus and I can only conclude that it has been worked out great. Hopefully the second part, that will be released in 2007, has got the same quality of songwriting to get the band to an even higher level.