When I was in junior high school, my friends goaded me into reading J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. While I was impressed with Tolkien’s descriptions and character development, I had a really hard time getting into the story. The suspension of disbelief required for such reading doesn’t come naturally to me, and my mind raced through questions about some of the more fantastical aspects of the book.

In a small way, the debut album from Anthropia hits me the same way. It depicts a fantasy world filled with nymphs, dwarves, dragons, witches and magic spells. It’s all a bit difficult to keep track of and frankly, I have enough trouble figuring out the world I’m a part of without having to deal with an alternate sphere.

In the real world, Anthropia is a band name for French multi-instrumentalist Hugo Lefebvre, who plays all the sounds on the album save for the drums of Damien Rainaud and a few minor guest performances. The Ereyn Chronicles is based on the stories of Quentin Borderie, who has influenced countless European metal bands and singer songwriter Aimee Mann. The Journey Begins is the first of a trilogy of releases Lefebvre is planning for his interpretations of Borderie’s work.

Musically, the album is an odd mix of Iron Maiden like metal, mixed with some symphonic boogie and Peter Gabriel era Genesis for atmospherics. Surprisingly, this concoction works fairly well together. Lefebvre takes full advantage of his tremendous gift at classical guitar and adds some thunderous electric and bass guitar overlays to give the production theatrical intensity. Lefebvre successfully portrays the drama and conflicts that bedevil Borderie’s constructs and easily shifts moods to bring out the dimensionality of the characters and the twisting of the plot.

If you’re into fantasy and metal, you’ll love this album. Even though Lefebvre reaches into a grab bag of seventies and eighties music for his composition, he is true to the forms and sometimes surpasses the expectations a listener might have for a record so steeped in musical as well as mythic lore. In its own way, The Ereyn Chronicles is a bit anachronistic, but considering the material that inspired it, the incongruous aspects makes it even cooler.

But it must be noted that this really is a specialty item for fantasy fans. If you’re like me and have a problem with suspending disbelief, you might like the music but the storyline will leave you behind. For those of us who aren’t about to rock with The Ereyn Chronicles, I’d suggest investing in the CD/DVD of This Is Spinal Tap, and at least get a laugh out of the fantasy driven lyrics that almost made them famous.