The Storyteller

I must respectfully disagree with UltraBoris on this one, this is not merely Hammerfall worship, this is pretty much an album that worships the concept album explosion of the 1999-2000, which is how I explain the exceptionally large number of ballads. Essentially these guys tried to merge the speed and power of Hammerfall and Gamma Ray with the ballad approach of Blind Guardian. As such it is necessary to carefully sift through the collection of songs so we can understand where the potential exists, and to what extent it either did or didn’t manifest itself on this release.

L-G Persson’s voice is fairly good, although I don’t think he utilizes his high register enough for the genre, and thus is my primary reason for deducting points. He actually reminds me a bit of Stephen Fredrick (formerly of Firewind) when in his middle register, although his higher wails are a bit more reminiscent of Eric Adams of Manowar. The rest of the band pulls their share quite well, although there are times when I almost think that the drummer is a drum machine, need more fill-ins and dynamic contrast.

Since the ballads and slower songs on here are, more often than not, the first line of attack for this band’s critics I will address them first. Our first ballad “Always Be There” is probably the weakest song on this album, and although lacking the German slapstick lyrics, reminds me a bit of an Edguy ballad. The piano line and the strings are well done, but it is way too repetitive. Blind Guardian ballads are loaded with changes and have powerful backing choirs for a reason, and that is to keep the song from getting boring, and unfortunately this song lacks both. “Power Within” has an interesting acoustic intro, reminiscent of a Blind Guardian ballad, but once the loud guitars kick in we switch to the Hammerfall speed mode. These two rather different styles being blended don’t necessary clash, but it should probably only be done once or twice on an album. “Like a Wind” is probably the only song here that can qualify as a true “ballad” in the Blind Guardian sense, but the atmosphere is not as dense. My only real complaint about this one is that the ending is a bit anti-climactic. If I were to re-write it, I would have had a dramatic key change at the end, accompanied by a grand choir of backing singers.

Some of the songs on here are what I’d call deceptive epics, in the sense that you expect a ballad, but you instead get an intro with a faster or heavier follow-up section. “Chant of the Thieves” is probably the most Middle-Earth of the bunch, although I must say that the background chorus on this one sounds a bit odd, as the words sound like some sort of variation on elvish. What you get is Blind Guardian vocals, over top of what sounds like a Hammerfall ballad. The title track takes the opposite approach, and begins with the electric guitars going, and then quiets down. A bit similar to “Like a Wind” at times, but then kicks it up a notch to pure speed metal. This is the big epic of the album and is loaded with changes, some smooth, others a bit abrupt. The approach to soloing on this particular one is actually a bit reminiscent of the Helloween approach to dueling guitars and variation between shredding and melodic patterns.

Among the fast songs, “Guardians of Kail” is the obvious winner for fans of power metal, as it is a 100% speed and riff fest from start to finish. “Book of Mystery” takes the same approach, but starts with a quasi-thrash riff, which turns out to be a bit deceptive as everything that follows is more Hammerfall style power metal. “Sense of Steel” is more Hammerfall speed metal, and is pretty much interchangeable with “Guardians of Kail”. To you fans of the straight-forward approach to power metal, you will only have 3 songs on here that truly qualify as such.

We have one outlier track on here dubbed “Test of Endurance and Strength”, which is a bit long for a title. It actually reminds me a bit of “The Bard’s Song - The Hobbit”, the heavy half of the well known ballad off Blind Guardian’s Somewhere Far Beyond. However, we do not get the dense layer of harmonies that Blind Guardian gave us the whole way through, as the arrangement here has been suited towards focusing completely on the vocals when they are present.

Now, as to my assessment of this album after taking all into account, I don’t think that the Hammerfall-clone label is really fair to hit these guys with (unlike Dream Evil, whom are admitted Hammerfall clones). They’re approach is quite a bit different on several levels, particularly in how the album is paced. They do have their Hammerfall moments, but there are plenty of non-Hammerfall moments. However, this album is by no means something that I would qualify as exceptional. It is good, it is well worthy the money if you can avoid import charges (I had to get my copy from Japan due to the fact that America has no fucking sense of music!), but there is a lot that could have been done better here. I myself will look into their follow up releases in curiosity to see how they’ve developed. I recommend this album to fans of power metal in the epic vain, be it Hammerfall, Blind Guardian, and even 1990s Helloween at times.

So here is the new album by Storyfall... no wait, Hammerteller... well, you get the point. It would probably do them good to call themselves either of those - because right now they have probably the worst name in all of heavy metal (worse than Dew Scented).

Anyway, the music... it's total Hammerfall worship, right down to the vocals and the more-speed-metal-riffs-than-the-average-flower-band ideals, and yes, even the crappitude of their ballads. This one would not go out of place between "Legacy of Kings" and "Renegade". Well, except that it's just more generally mediocre and forgettable. Whatever it is that the first two Hammerfall albums have in the way of being downright enjoyable ... this one just sort of doesn't have. It's not really bad, but when you combine the sameyness of the riffs with the abundance and the shittiness of the ballads (more than the obligatory two on every Hammerfall album). Furthermore, it seems that the songs just tend to take longer to get going. It seems every song is half ballad!

So the highlights... probably "Guardians of Kail" for total Hammerfall worship, because this is speed metal from beginning to end. Really, if you got that one song, you'd have all there is to hear from this album.