Awakening the World

So here I am, much like any other metalhead readying himself to write a review: Sitting at my computer at 5AM, drinking, listening to the album I am about to review.

And it's never felt so fucking right.

Where to begin with this one? Well, I'll start it by focusing the direct attention of this review straight to the entire reason this band deserves to exist at all: The vocalist. Daniel Heiman is, by far, the greatest and most talented Power Metal singer to ever walk the earth. Period. Little attention or spotlight has ever met the faces of this obscure Power Metal group, for reasons unknown, but it should not be so!

The greatness of this band will never, EVER be matched, if not by musicianship, then by vocal ability. There are no words to describe how truly fucking insane this singer is. His soars are unlike anything I have ever heard in my life. I've never even heard female opera singers reach the notes he reaches. However, unlike most Power Metal singers who strive to sing in super-high register, he has a fantastic low-mid-range vocal ability, and his tone is exceptionally well-formed. Each high note displays no sign of strain or breakage, and is powerful as hell. He has a full, lightly diveted vibrato that awashes an even fuller timbre. He is professional, right? Wrong.

He admits he has never even had a singing lesson...

FUCK.

Talent.

As for the drums, there's a lot to be said. They're a lot more aggressive and speedy than in their following album, and are the underlying factor for this album holding a lot more traditionalism to their Power Metal roots, and that DEFINITELY is demonstrated throughout the whole album, even in the ballads. But on the whole for this area of the band, the percussion is hard, fast, angry and well-fucking-executed.

Much respect.

Unfortunately the bass is a little over-powering in this album, and is one of the reasons for the fall in my rating of this album. It's been far too overmixed, and this brings the general presence of the low-range tone in the mix to an uncomfortable level, if played on a decent stereo/through decent headphones. However, in a fucked up sort of way, it allows us to hear each crucial note in the counter-melodies played to accompany the guitars, which can actually be quite beneficial, as bass players are DESPERATELY trying to reclaim their role as being "the foundation of the band" (Shut up Murderface), and will no doubt cater to their needs of improving writing calibre. I guess there are pros and cons to everything.

The guitars and keyboards in this album are FOREVER conflicting with each other. Which is never good. My personal preference is to have keyboards situated as the element of AMBIENCE in this genre, and should only ever be largely audible when the keyboardist is playing either a solo or counter-melody for a guitar solo. Anything other than these two musical positons will just cause aural conflict. Unfortunately, the keyboards are constantly washing away all the potential power of the guitar riffage, and almost appears to be having a battle of WHO'S GUNNA BE THE LOUDEST??...And the keyboards generally win, but in the annoying way. So in my opinion, this album could have been greatly improved if they had made the keyboards shut the fuck up for a second so the guitars can do what they have to do. But this was not to be, and we are stuck with this version, but I guess the vocals can always compensate.

The intro and outro should have never been put on this record. They've clearly been placed on the album for time-filler, as the album is, evidently, quite brief...Nevertheless, putting several combined minutes of useless samples at the beginning and end of a record does not lengthen it or make it more epic, it actually takes away a lot of the impact.

But, on the whole, although the album does have a lot of flaws and short-comings, the general atmosphere, musicianship, compositional integrity and EPIC fucking singing efforts, have all proven to make this album being worthy of being put on the Top 10 Power Metal Albums of All Time.

-Rhapsorizon.