It was simply wonderful to receive a new submission from Callipolis today. We previously have reviewed Callipolis and we just loved it! Twilight Snow was an exciting ride of musical theatre with modern production and some definite Queen influences, especially in the guitar.
Heatless Love is the new song from Callipolis and we were not disappointed. The song starts with a gentle Church organ that fades in slowly and introduces the guitar riff that follows later once the full band comes in.
This is really dramatic rock/metal with a theatrical style thrown in for good measure. We can see Queen influences again – although any rock with theatrical influence would be bound to cite Queen as an influence, Callipolis really manages to carry it off with those stunning warm vocals with such passion and power in his voice to make you want to go search out his entire back catalogue and scream for more music to keep you satiated. This is really quality stuff!
There are moments in Heatless Love that reminded us of Jesus Christ Superstar and there’s also a few Queensryche influences in there too. The background industrial sounds and percussion make for an exciting song that just lifts you. This is positively euphoric stuff whilst also managing to be melancholic in subject matter.
There really is some spectacular control in the vocals here. The long notes made us all hold our breath, wondering just how long he’s able to hold the note for. The background vocals really help build the song and the rise and fall maintained our interest easily, even though this is a slightly longer than commercial radio friendly length song.
There’s some superb panning of the industrial sounds, percussion and backing vocals, all adding to, and making this a really full stereo sounding track.
There’s a touch of Portishead in the tone chosen for the electric guitar repeated riff, and we are learning to truly love how Callipolis crosses genres with such ease.
The song ends as it starts, with a fade out on the church organ and we like that, both from a musicality perspective but also it feels as though the artist has sneaked in, said everything he wanted to say, and then sneaked back out, closing the door gently behind him. It is almost as if there is an insecurity and vulnerability in the message of the song, that he is almost unsure that you might want to hear. Heatless Love tiptoes in, shines bright and then burns out quickly. A great metaphor we think!
Our thoughts on production are that this has, once again, been very well produced. We’d suggest a little more in the low and low mids to boost some warmth into the track and make it just a little less “brittle” in places. A cut in the mid to high mid and a boost of the top octave will help balance the track out overall, but in our opinion, this is an exceptional track.
Callipolis has once again aced it with a genre crossing, musical theatre/rock masterpiece. Fast becoming one of our favourites, we can’t wait to hear more.