Ancient Evil

Cage is a very distinctive-sounding US Heavy/Power Metal band whose popularity has been kind of on and off during some time. The main culprit is that their recipe for success has been stretched so thin that it has broken a couple of times. Cage use a formula that works very well for them and suits all of their strengths, they play a very Painkiller inspired power metal with cutting riffs, notably epic, powerful drums and characterized by the excellent vocal performance of their front-man Sean Peck. They guy really can reach very high peaks without hindering the overall power of his voice.

Maybe because they felt like they were repeating themselves a little bit, they opted for writing a concept album based on a fantasy horror story apparently based on a written novel by Cage’s vocalist. That may sound comparable to a King Diamond album, but the story really goes in a different direction. Fortunately for them, the layered story calls for changes in musical approach depending on what’s going on. You have your most epic moments in songs like “Beholder”, Symphony of Sin” or “Behind the Walls of Newgate”, you have for more melancholic moments (“Across the Sea of Madness”, “Tomorrow Never Came”), and then your darker moments in “The Procedure” and “The Appetite”, something that I personally missed from Cage since their golden era (Darker than Black and Hell Destroyer). The latter may be my favorite song in Ancient Evil.

Nevertheless, this album also brings forward one of the worst aspects of this band at full force. This album is just way too long. This is a negative aspect which plagues even some of their best records, but it is a very noticeable setback for Ancient Evil in particular. Don’t be surprised if you want/are forced to leave this record at the halfway point. There are a lot of songs in this album, but besides that the problem is their duration. Being that this is a concept album, I understand the songs have to be lyric heavy, but they really should have taken a note form the King and make a better effort to implement more variation in vocal melodies. Take the song “Ancient Evil” for example. The verses and choruses are not that memorable to be repeated that often. The pace in most songs doesn’t help either. Most of them are in a constant speed which makes them remarkably tiring.

On a more positive side, I’m grateful the production is remarkably better than in the previous album. I can’t really tell you what happened there, but it would have hurt a lot if this album lacked any sort of punch. In Ancient Evil everything sounds very well and well adjusted, overall the sound is one of the best things about it, at least for this kind of US power metal.

In short, if this is your first album of Cage, it’s not a bad start, but you’d better check their previous albums. If you are a longtime fan, you can be reassured this experiment did not work completely, but there was more good than bad, and if the album was a lot shorter, would have been perfect. Highlights are Behind the Walls of Newgate, The Appetite, Beholder and Symphony of Sin, so there are plenty of good songs throughout it all and you shouldn’t feel discouraged to play this album from the middle point.