Heroes of Mighty Magic

This is the second album by the Swedish six-piece, released internationally on 26 August 2016 and the first they made for Nuclear Blast Records. The band describe it as a step up from their debut in every way, most obviously in how much more symphonic, orchestral and operatic material is in the songs. It is also the second and last record with Chrileon singing; Alessandro Conti replaced him in June 2018. The raw material had been accumulating for years. The characters, the world and the stories are all the work of Blackwald, who is one of the band's principal writers. At the start it was a loose collection of songs that he and Lynd had written some years earlier, a few of them older than the debut Tales of Ancient Prophecies. As the tracks came together and the writing neared its end, the band set out to make something they could look back on years later and still be proud of. The sources are fantasy novels and video games, with J. R. R. Tolkien and Isaac Asimov both named. The title comes from the Heroes of Might and Magic games, though Blackwald and Lynd have pointed at others too, World of Warcraft among them. Having a larger label behind them was a driving factor in how the record was produced.