Maybe I'm just not in the mood for Power Metal. I
don't know. No...that's not it, because every time I listen to this CD
I genuinely enjoy the music. It's just the vocalist. I have this urge;
this indescribable calling - nay, duty - to bury him up to his knees in
pig shit and smash him in the face with a shovel until he be dead. He
is, without a doubt, the smarmiest, most self righteous, toadying little
Jesus-minstrel I think I've ever heard.
You have to understand this - when I listen to his
voice I think of the religious zealot who's disappeared so far up his
own ass we can only still hear his loathsome croonings because his voice
is so damn loud. This man is the Ned Flanders of Power Metal. If I told
him this to his face he'd laugh heartily and beckon me to his table for
a flagon of mead and would tell me a tale of someone not unlike myself
at the end of which there would be a moral that he would genuinely believe
would make me see the error of my ways: "My Christian God! I'm so sorry,
sir; prithee forgive mine ignorance - thou art an overwhelmingly talented
vocalist and not at all a whinging do-gooder with a voice that I would
surely like to tear from your very throat and jump on repeatedly in the
dust of this quaint medieval inn, no indeed!" But no.
Vocals aside, the songwriting is rather excellent
- Power Metal with that Iron Maiden-y feel to it - and closer to Maiden
than the slightly more extreme sounding bands of the genre. Lyrics detail
stories reminiscent of Arthurian legend, and the guitar work, though nothing
exceptional, compliments the un-exceptional drum work nicely. No stand-out
riffs you'll be whistling for days afterwards; though there are a couple
of memorable refrains provided mostly by the vocal melodies and guitar/vocal
harmonies.
In essence the CD perfectly exemplifies an album in
which the strength of the music lies in the way each player (and I include
the vocalist here) comes together to create something much better than
the sum of its original parts. This phenomenon means there is not a bad
track on the album - just a fistfull of good-but-I-wouldn't-play-them-if-I-wasn't-reviewing-them
flavoured tracks. I believe that most Power Metal aficionados will enjoy
this album, and most likely won't even notice the loathsome vocals - he
is undeniably an un-exceptionally talented vocalist. He's just very, very
annoying to me.
