The Fallen Empire

The Fallen Empire is the third album, released on 24 March 2006. This is where the line-up starts coming apart. Jani Liimatainen had left the guitar chair the previous year, in 2005, and Emppu Vuorinen had gone in 2004. So this is the first Altaria album without either of the guitarists who made the debut. It is also the last with Taage Laiho, who left the same year. Ironically, plenty of people call it their best. One fan, finding a line from its song "The Lion" quoted back in a much later record, was indignant that those words had been crammed into an inferior song when this album meant so much to him. Reactions like that say more about what standard the band had set than any description of the riffs could.