As during the group's whole career, The Black Light Bacchanalia reveals the full range of Virgin Steele's epic and at the same time tough music. Their songs are always powerful yet intricate, featuring tasteful chord changes, spherical atmospheres and raw rock/metal instrumentation. "My special challenge as the tracks' composer is to process my ideas, which I worked out on the piano, into metal songs on guitar, bass and drums while keeping to their original concept. That's a real struggle every time and requires a lot of concentration at the studio." Because - and this is something which certainly can't be said of the majority of tracks produced by other metal bands - all Virgin Steele compositions also work if performed by piano and vocals alone. A real phenomenon, but one that's symptomatic of this group. At the same time, The Black Light Bacchanalia features a number of interesting innovations which are cleverly integrated into typical Virgin Steele ingredients: in addition to guitarist Edward Pursino's 6 string flurries, guitarist Josh Block recorded a number of passages on seven-string guitar, which naturally affects the song's structure and tone colour. "I feel that a lot of harmonies sound darker and heavier than usual due to the seven-string guitar," DeFeis points out. The drums also sound extremely powerful, dynamic and vibrant. "We consciously opted for a kind of live drum sound," says the Virgin Steele boss, "creating a raw, very energetic flair, comparable to John Bonham's drum style."