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Imperanon > Stained > Reviews > The_Wanderer
Imperanon - Stained

Noodle, Noodle, Noodle - 50%

The_Wanderer, June 16th, 2008

I checked out this band because I am a huge fan of Wintersun (it has Teemu in it), besides being a pretty big melodeath fan in general. I didn’t expect Imperanon to be anywhere near the quality of Wintersun’s music (everyone knows it’s all Jari), but I did expect above average, tasteful, catchy, perhaps epic melodic death metal. The fact that “neoclassical” was listed in their genre raised my hopes. What I ended up getting was the first album ever to have noodley lead guitar that actually pissed me off. I listen to Yngwie, folks. This is far less tasteful.


Once you’ve heard the opening track, you’ve heard them all. Noodle, noodle, noodle. It sounds like the lead guitarist is just practicing his scales over a very typical and mediocre Finnish melodeath rhythm section and cheesy synth. The bass is, of course, nothing to speak of. Neither are the drums. There are no particularly memorable riffs, or leads for that matter. All of the leads tend to be catchy at first, before they repeat a million times, and others simply sound like a bored shredder going up and down the minor scale. The vocals are extremely typical of Finnish melodeath as well. Not that I particularly hate Norther, but if you played this alongside them I may not be able to tell the difference.


The only standout tracks are the ones with the guest vocalists, and even those aren’t that amazing. It’s really sad that this band has to rely on guests to make songs that are worth anything because they can’t do it themselves. Hollow Man was good at first, but there are too many choruses. The clean vox are good, but in the end all they did for me was differentiate this song from the rest of Stained, the song is not really anything particularly special. Neither is Shadowsoul. The female vocals make it unlike the rest of Stained, but not much better. It is still rather repetitive, and the girl’s voice is actually a bit annoying at times. It wasn’t painful for me to get through this album, but I probably won’t go back. I feel very indifferent towards it. Stay away from it unless you really like Norther-type Finnish melodeath. Don’t expect anything great.