4/5

Like I mentioned before I haven't been to impressed by the latest releases from MTM - but I never thought a French epic/melodic hard rock could ever change that fact - but Silence has. This is absolutely one of the most exciting releases from France - ever!
Silence is the brainchild of multi instrumentalist Bruno LeVesque who made two previous albums under this moniker. In 1997 he recorded the debut called "The Fifth Season" an all instrumental album - and in 2000 he recorded the second called "Trouble in Paradise" also instrumental! But in the early 2001 he met amazing vocalist Jérôme Cazard and the album "Utopia" was in the making!
Cazards vocal range is pretty impressive - I don't know anything about octaves or anything like that - but what I do know is that he outmatches DC Cooper, James LaBrie or even Ronnie Atkins - a voice that can spand from straight soft melodic AOR to progressive/epic and powerful hard rock - actually I've never heard anything quite like this.
According to their web-site LeVesque is influenced by so different bands like Saxon, Mercyful Fate, Vicious Rumours on the Metal side and Asia, Heart, Chicago, Journey and Pretty Maids on the melodic side. And the album reflects these influences very nice. The track "Down" is Cazard's voice backed up by a grand piano - a monster ballad! But the intro to the title track is worth a million - semi acustic, but soon exploding in a melodic mayhem, fabulous and ending with an instrumental outro! The next track is much more heavy - the thundrous intro and spheric vocals could be from the new King Diamond album or even fellow Danes Mercyful Fate - but soon the melodic preferences shows and now Silence changes their musical expression radically. And that is in fact the whole essence here - ever changing expression, but not so fast that I as a listener loses my breath - very tasteful!
I can really recommend this MTM and Silence has released a masterpiece - and even the cover of Kim Wilde's "Kids In America" is fantastic!