review by: Roberto Martinelli

More sword and sorcery power metal, this time from Finland. Celesty is a total copycat band of Stratovarius and - to a lesser (but nonetheless important) extent - Sonata Arctica. The music on Reign of Elements is solidly played and has the right energizing feel that a good power metal record should, and the singer can hold his own. However, Celesty doesn't have a single ounce of originality to offer.

The songs are all fast (except for a useless ballad at the end), which would be fine, but they're so alike one another that things get very monotonous after a song or two at the most. You've heard this album dozens of times before: uninterestingly simple riffs that are an afterthought on which the vocals rest upon, fast parts with the exact same bass line each time, and two or three basic beats - the overwhelming main one being the double bass triplet rhythm that gets done to death.

So albums like this are predictable from the word go. It's hard to imagine power metal that could be any more generic. This band has enough skill to give us more, why not get a little adventurous and try to aspire to more than being a Helloween or Stratovarius clone? As it is, Reign of Elements delivers the most basic two or three characteristics that are generally accepted to make a good power metal record, but only those who can't get enough of the Euro double bass power metal beat will find any sort of enduring satisfaction from this album.