Crystal Empire

Freedom Call continued after Stairway to Fairyland by doing the exact same thing on their second album Crystal Empire, only this time it’s a little more streamlined. This is a more conventional power metal album, melding right in with the scene at the time which was absolutely bursting at the seams. They dialed down a lot of their epic songwriting here into quicker, more light-footed tunes – skipping along like rocks along the water. The epics they do give us are a bit more stodgy and conventional too – more consciously epic, without the sparks of ingenious songwriting the debut had with its build-ups and bridges before the choruses. But one thing still remains clear – this is the second happiest metal album ever, right up there with Fairyland.

The first half of the album is easily the stronger half. You get a slew of really awesome songs right in a row. The self-titled track “Freedom Call” is a gallant, romantic tune with speedy double-bass runs, trilling guitars and a high, fluttery melodic chorus – basically a clinic on how to do this kind of flowery, girly power metal. Catchy as hell and awesome as hell. “Rise Up” is even better, with more speedy riffs and an even better chorus. “RISE UP TO HEAVEN!” How can you not be happy when that’s playing?! It could make even the sorriest basement-dweller feel like a triumphant warrior looking out over a sunset-drenched land after a raging battle. “Farewell” is probably the album standout – that opening A Capella vocal part is just amazing and the song jumps into another peppy, upbeat rocker.

Further tunes like “Ocean” and “The Wanderer” rock out with more amazingly hooky moments, especially “Ocean” – an instantly memorable song. Epics like “The Quest” with its complex structure are good, but I dunno – the deeper chanting vocals just don’t sound as good as Chris Bay’s harmonized high-note bliss on the speedier, more direct songs. “Heart of the Rainbow” is a bit stodgy for this reason too. “Palace of Fantasy” is worthy of note just for how much of a jamboree of choirs and musical accompaniment it is. Probably impossible to play live, but also a forebearer to the Angra Temple of Shadows style power metal cornucopias.

If you hate this kind of flowery, upbeat power metal, Crystal Empire won’t change your mind. But for those of you jonesing for some lighthearted, spacious epic metal, I’d say this is worth your time.

In a few hours time I'll be off to see German power metal maestro's Freedom Call; masters of all things gorgonzola. I'm sat here with a stupid smile on my face - much like the one I had when I first heard Crystal Empire. For the uninitiated Freedom Call play the type of saccharine power metal most will condemn as flower metal, and to be fair, I wouldn't argue the point. Freedom Call are as wimpy as they come, choirs, keyboards, high fantasy? You got it. Is this bad though? Far from it.

As far as this style of sickly melodic power metal goes Freedom Call pretty much held the monopoly on the style at the turn of the century. Sure, there wasn't a lot of meat on the bones, or weight to the riffs as so to say, but what they did offer was the kind of music best suited to an inebriated late night sing along. Just about every song on Crystal Empire features a massive chorus, that after around two listens you're going to want to belt out at the top of your voice. Only the most dedicated conoisseur of misery could deny this album.

Packed full of catchy songs, led by the wonderful stick-work of Gamma Ray drum overlord Dan Zimmermann Crystal Empire is an exercise in guilty pleasure of the finest pedigree. Chris Bay's syrupy vocal work is backed by numerous choirs reeking of European pomp, I wouldn't be surprised if Kai Hansen helped out with these, I certainly notice a hint of that Gamma Ray magic. As for the guitar work, Chris Bay proves that he isn't merely a sugary voice, unleashing every trick he learned from Kai Hansen's "Power Metal for Dummies" book. Sascha Gerstner lays down some jolly good guitar leads throughout, but he never truly found his footing until he joined up with Helloween. As for the bass, it pretty much follows the drum and doesn't necessarily add or detract from the sound.

So, while I might have bled out a trickle of sarcasm throughout the review, I actually like Crystal Empire pretty well. Tracks such as the immortal "Freedom Call" or the later in the album brilliance of "The Quest" and "Heart of the Rainbow" Freedom Call proved themselves as cheese merchants worthy of business. Whilst hardly the best album the Germans had hidden up their collective sleeves, Crystal Empire is a near mandatory purchase for your average power metal aficianado, as well as fans of the lighter, more melodic shade of the metal spectrum. However those with faces locked in a permanent grimace should probably shut the blinds and pretend this band never existed.

Freedom Call's Crystal Empire is a shiny flurry of sparkling Carebears prancing through fields of poesies with rainbows shooting out of their asses and sunbeams shining in through one ear and out the other without obstruction, and I'll be damned if it doesn't grate on the nerves. This stuff is complete and total fluff, every idiotic flower metal convention all rolled up into a nice big ball of cliché that verges on self-parody. This album could've been written in a matter of hours, because there is not one original thought here. Let's run through this gauntlet of stupidity together shall we?

Musically, this album is laughably light in the loafers, bass frequencies pretty much inaudible, heavy riffs rare (and when they occur sounding like cut-rate Symphony X), riffs in general barely registering in the ol' memory banks. So it doesn't rock. It also doesn't take any advantage of its buoyancy, rarely taking its dreary melodic riffs into overdrive and zipping around with scorching classical riffs or engaging in that incredible dance of leads that power can do so well. Instead we get toothless melodies that take the sappiest Germanic folk-pop-sugarcoated riffic spoo from the worst couple of Helloween and Stratovarius records and play them incessantly with all of the emotion and intensity of a child's music box. Actually, music boxes have been known to make people cry. These guys make Lenny Kravitz look like a gutsy risk-taker.

And man, those keyboards. Other than a few Images & Words-ish leads (nowhere near Kevin Moore's level though), they spend the majority of the album tinkling along with the guitar on what I can only assume is the only patch on the dude's keyboard ('bad orchestra'). Somehow it makes it even lighter.

Worse yet are the vocals, which are utterly faceless. For the most part they sound like the standard Tate/Kiske clone (obviously without the intelligence and drama of the former and the charm of the latter), but with an extra pinch of Don Dokken-like sweetness that makes every note sound extremely easy as if no effort is being put into it. Mostly because Bay is probably not pushing himself at all. He never makes a mistake, his voice never cracks, you never hear any strain... 98% of singers out there have more passion and personality in their pinkie finger than this robot. The songwriting does him no favours.

Power metal bands use big anthem-y choruses with huge fake choirs all the time, and the main reason for this (besides the Lemming-like 'follow the leader' philosophy) is to get their smiley European fans to sing along with the band. Well, I hope I never see Freedom Call live but if I ever do I will be damned impressed by their fans for not falling asleep midway through the chorus. They are too damned long for what they seek to accomplish, and as a result the repetitive pop riffage of songs like "Freedom" is dragged out to a degree that is usually found only in the manufactured corporate schlock shilled by the likes of Jive and Wind-Up.

In fact, this whole album seems ill-thought and slapped together. Why on earth would a band playing what is in all respects a profoundly European style of music think they can properly sing about Egyptian mythology? They don't even bother trying to insert any sort of window-dressing to give an appropriate motif, they don't even spell the damn word right ("Pharao"?!). They just plunge along with their insipid music just like every other track on the album. Goddamn Iron Maiden for writing songs as good as "Powerslave" and "Revelations" and convincing these puffed-up poofs that they can handle the subject in any way that isn't laughable.

Basically, there is one pretty good song on this album. It is in no way original, but the riffage has a bit of bite and it manages to be much more dynamic than any of the other tracks on the album. "Heart of the Rainbow" brings to mind Symphony X, albeit with a less interesting chorus, featuring a pretty chunky riff about 2/3 through the song, a cool keyboard/guitar duel and a decent harmony riff forming the backbone of the song. If the rest of the record were like this, we'd be looking at a 75 or so. But we ain't.

Freedom Call is pretty much the lowest form of power metal derivative, and are EXACTLY why I never bothered much with this genre until relatively recently. Dan Zimmerman should be ashamed of this considering his pedigree with the likes of Gamma Ray. No triggers? Good for you. Take those skills somewhere it will make a difference.

Stand-Outs: "Heart of the Rainbow"

It was an exciting time to be a power metal enthusiast, the time span from around 1997 up until 20002, provided that one either lived in Europe, Japan or key parts of South America or was otherwise diligent enough to seek out imported albums if one was relegated to the USA as the author of this review happened to have been. While credit is mostly due to first wave veterans like Helloween, Blind Guardian and Gamma Ray on the German front, there was a curious phenomenon where studio engineers working in said scene through the 90s and having connections with one or more of said bands in Piet Sielck and Freedom Call's front man and mastermind Chris Bay provided a sort of missing link between the older guard and a newer generation. Though all of these bands shared a somewhat similar affinity for chorus-oriented, fast paced power metal with a speed metal edge, Freedom Call stood apart from the pack by taking the light-hearted and heroic aspects of Helloween's formative sound and exaggerated them to the ninth degree.

Though this band has generally maintained a consistent stylistic niche and the early albums that round out the Taragon trilogy and interlude (if one includes the EP by the same name) are all drawn from a heavily similar idea pool, there is a clear break in approach that separates the raw, untamed grandeur of Stairway To Fairyland from Crystal Empire and it comes in the form of a more disciplined songwriting approach. Complete with an ambient prelude prior the first proper song, this album differs from its predecessor by not only having a conceptual lyrical content, but is methodically structured so that each song sounds like it picks up where the last one left off. It almost gets to the point where one might picture this album as a work of metallic musical theater, particularly during the first two-thirds of the songs where familiar themes all but rush out of each section as if they'd been heard either a moment ago or a couple songs back. Likewise, the keyboard usage, massive gang vocal backdrops and just the overall denseness of the texture of these songs lends itself heavily to a more theatrical take on power metal that veers fairly close to that of Nightwish and Rhapsody (Of Fire) while not quite morphing into symphonic territory.

Perhaps the best way to explain the contrast under consideration, apart from a greater degree of polish and predictability in execution, is in terms of accessibility. While just about every song on the debut was an epic work onto itself, here there is a greater mixture of "banger" songs that are compact, catchy and tailor made for live fanfare and songs that are far more concentrated grand scale works with even more moving parts than the most ambitious offerings on Stairway To Fairyland. "Freedom Call", the song bearing the band's very name, is arguably the most memorable piece of infectious live fair to ever come out of the power metal style and is chased by an even faster paced masterpiece in "Rise Up" and a similarly memorable cruiser in "Call Of Fame". Taking things down to a slow crawl yet still working off a similar set of melodic hooks and a massive choral arrangement, "Pharaoh" is yet another solid offering that chases a more mid-paced, almost pop/punk inspired celebratory ode in "Farewell". All of these songs differ in terms of pacing, yet carry a similarly disciplined and regimented songwriting approach that limits that amount of noodling by individual instruments that contrasts with the shred-happy sections and meandering progression of later songs "Heart Of The Rainbow" and "The Quest", which see some impressive lead guitar and keyboard battles to boot.

If the aforementioned songs rounded out the entire album, Crystal Empire would edge out its predecessor as the greatest effort in Freedom Call's now 20 year history. Be this as it may, there is a slight tapering off of effectiveness during the last third of the album where things kind of veer away from the quest-based grandeur in favor of an exclusively celebratory sound. Granted, the mid-paced and harmonically rich "Palace Of Fantasy" does reminisce on the gallant character of the earlier songs, but the speeder "Ocean" and the closing semi-ballad with a classical edge "The Wanderer" are exclusively happy-go-lucky in demeanor and lean a bit towards the more comical sensibilities of Helloween musically with even more of a pop affect, though lacking the slapstick lyrics to go with it. By no means are these songs weak in themselves, but they tend to interrupt the conceptual flow established earlier to an extent, as if the album reaches its climax and then proceeds to have a somewhat longer denouement than necessary.

It is said that great works tend to come out of a lot of tension, and the rather unceremonious exit of lead guitarist Sascha Gershner came to underscore the sort of "Lars and James Hetfield" type cabal that Chris Bay and Dan Zimmerman had established at the founding of this band in terms of who has priority in how songwriting happens. Though there is something to be said about this album being more exciting had the brilliant displays Gershner put on during the solo sections of "The Quest" and "Heart Of The Rainbow" shown up in more songs, conceptual albums lend themselves best to a uniform vision, hence why this album's greatness largely exists because Chris Bay handled much of the lead guitar work and micromanaged Gershner's input. It's a bittersweet irony that Freedom Call would never find a true replacement for Gershner and that he would end up trading leads with Michael Weikath in Helloween, but possibly also a necessary sacrifice in establishing the legendary status of this band's early works. Ultimately that is what this album is with regard to the millennial revival and power metal in general, a legendary work that takes the most positive imagery and uplifting melodies imaginable and miraculously avoids the pitfall of becoming a cartoon-like caricature, cynical naysayers not withstanding.

(Rewritten on February 26th, 2018)