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The Smokeless Fires is the second album from Lunar Shadow and it's an album full of the same crunchy, yet epic heavy metal sprinkled with fantasy and Sword and Sorcery lyrical themes. The music combines pounding riffs and acoustic embellishments with some faster guitar work that approaches thrash. Lunar Shadow's debut got some solid reviews, but something just didn't strike me the same way on The Smokeless Fires. The vocals are mixed sort of behind the guitars and are pretty thin and dry, not really what you want to hear in epic metal (new vocalist Robert Röttig, who reminds me a bit of High Sprits' Chris Black, is a step down from Alex Vornam who sang on the debut). The Smokeless Fires is still an entertaining album with some good songs (the Howardian "Red Nails (For the Pillar of Death)" jumps to mind) but it isn't on the same level as Far from Light.