2006-12-25
This Canadian power metal band's debut album is quite an impressive effort, it sounds as European as any German band, with very strong resemblance to Finland's
Sonata Arctica, with strong keyboards, fast guitars, double bass drumming and high pitched vocals… you get the picture. The fact the album was mastered by Mikka Jussila, who masters most of Finland's power metal, also demonstrates a certain direction here.
The album has a good cover, but the band's logo is…well, unreadable, I spent a few minutes trying to decipher it, in any case, besides the packaging, the inside is quite impressive indeed. One more thing, the sound, though overall quite good, has a bit of a problem in the guitar section, while the rest of the instruments sound fine, the guitars tend to be a bit too low in the mix in certain points. Still, it doesn’t hinder the album too much.
Among the band's obvious strengths are the vocals, Gabriel Langelier has a good strong voice which carries through even the weaker tracks, the drumming is also quite impressive, as are the keyboards, the guitars are fine, but they need bit more memorable riffs and melody lines, some of the guitar parts in the tracks sound too similar to each other, and the leads are a bit uneven, with one guitarist coming off as better than the other.
Standout tracks are the second one – "Walking Home", which has a strong chorus and some impressive playing, and the title track, which benefits from a strong performance by the band's keyboardist. The quieter songs are a bit boring, but since most of the album is fast and quite energetic all-in-all its fine.
A strong album for power metal fans with an affinity to such bands as Sonata Arctica and
Stratovarious, they need to put more emphasis on the guitars, sound and riff wise, but apart from that this album is very close to power metal perfection
Alon Miasnikov
