The Last King

Remember the late eighties, when power metal was not over the top and too often hard to take seriously? Yeah, can we go back to those days? Ragenheart seems to think so and they delivered. By the way, I don't know what their first album was like, so I’ll be judging this one on its own merits.

This album is not completely devoid of keyboards, don’t get me wrong, but Ragenheart doesn't abuse them. The focus is on the guitars and vocals, whereas the keyboards are, for the most part, kept as support and accentuation of some sections. In fact, the keyboards are not used at all on some tracks (I'll single out 'Fear' and 'The Mirror'). The bass doesn’t really get to shine, but at least I can hear it. I do like the drums on this, though, I kind of wish there were some amazing drum solos, but there were many lovely fills, so there’s that.

When I first heard the vocals, I thought 'Joacim Cans, is that you?' But then I read somewhere that many people compared John Koroneos, the vocalist, to Tony Martin, who was in Black Sabbath for a while. After hearing some Black Sabbath stuff with Tony, yeah, I have to agree that Tony's the better comparison. Either way, John does a really good job. Not only is he probably the best fit for Ragenheart, but he doesn’t try to overextend himself at any point. There are many power metal vocalists who could take some lessons from him.

There's a fair amount of variety, not everything is at the same speed. Just compare 'Fear' (I can almost imagine its intro coming from Liege Lord), 'The Last King' (the epic) and 'Dreamer' (the ballad). Oh, yeah, there's also an eighties-tribute song... can you guess which one? OK, it's blatantly obvious which one I'm talking about if you're even reading anything about this album. Variety can lead to inconsistencies in quality, but that’s not the case here, this album starts out strong and keeps going. But if I had to pick favorites, I'd take 'Blind Alley' and 'Fear'.

All in all, I can safely recommend this album to any power metal fan who wants something not over the top. Oh, hell, I can recommend this to anyone who likes heavy metal. Ragenheart haven't put out much so far, but wouldn't it be awesome to get more stuff like this?