Echoes of War

Made essentially for the ones who could not listen to the bonus tracks of the first two albums, Echoes of War is an EP made of 4 tracks. The title track comes from the regular version of Hastings 1066. It is not a direct and easy-to-hear song, so the choice to put it in this EP is not the best ever made by the band. Though it’s a good track, it is too long, and sometimes boring, failing to catch the listener all the time; for the event, it has also been fused with its own intro (in Hastings 1066, there is a separated intro before the real track starts), as it wasn’t already long enough.

Echoes of War is progressive oriented, so it will please more the prog-metallers than the fans of symphonic power. It is the classic not-magnificent-but-good song, with nice moments and others a bit boring. The band could have chosen a better, faster and catchier song from Hastings 1066… Turning to the song itself, the massive usage of the keyboard is a good thing, since it gives a medieval feeling; in the beginning you can even hear the female vocals, that contribute to the atmosphere. The main vocals, though, are not that good, still it is a nice voice, but just in this song Dario Grillo does not give his best (and who listened to Hastings knows that he CAN do better than this). But real boring time comes at the solo, not that bad, but again, too long. Don’t get on me, I like long solos, but only when they are magnificent, and this one is too simple and uncatchy to be that long. This problem causes the track not to be the right title track to be in an EP, as even the rest of the song isn’t all fine.
Let’s get to the second track, the diamond of this CD, In God We Trust. It is the very same song that stroke the hit parades in 1988. It is all that the first song is not. It’s catchy, fast, with surprising riffs and vocals, never boring, and easy to remember, so you will find yourself singing it many times, I’m sure about it. The most impressive aspect is the vocals line, that makes you forget the anonymous performance of the previous track, it is even better than the original version and so it is the production. The only downside is that is too short.
The third track is a short instrumental from the Brazilian version of The Lasting Power, not essential but still a nice and atmospheric guitar solo of about one minute.
The last one, Facing the Beast, also comes from the Brazilian version of the debut album, and now we can understand why the band has chosen not to put it in the regular version: it was not worth, it’s by far the worst track of the CD. The structure and aspects are the same of the first song, but here we suffer of the immature past of the band that affects the solos guitar, the voice, and more generally the songwriting.

So, to get to the conclusion, in my humble opinion In God We Trust alone is worth the price of this EP, which is very low and handy! But, to be righteous and impartial, the other tracks are still good, except the last one, but not magnificent. I won’t never understand why the band has chosen so an uncatchy song to be the title track, this makes it seem like it was directed only to Thy Majestie super-fans. It would have been a hundred times better if they were putting The King and the Warrior or Through the Bridge of Spears for instance, that are shorter, easier to listen, and more reasonable to be in a mini-CD.
But as it is, if you’re not an huge fan of the band you can avoid this. If you want a taste of what Thy Majestie is, and you don’t have much money, this could be good. Still if you have the good intention to get near to this powerful combo for real, I suggest you to get Hastings 1066 if you like long solos, overused Gregorian voices and an ultra-melodic voice, otherwise dive into Jeanne D’Arc if you are more heavy oriented.

Echoes of War was originally an EP, but then made into an MCD. Here we have four songs making a very short MCD for only 15 minutes. However, the song alone 'In God We Trust' (a Stryper Cover) makes this album worth all the money, and i'm not just saying this because i'm a big Stryper fan. As the MCD states it was only released as a bonus track for the Japenese version of Hastings 1066. Anyway it is truly a fantastic epic power metal song, with great progressive and medieval influence and the use of a chior to add to the feel of Saxon England. The other songs are good but not as good as this, Echoes of war is just taken from Hastings 1066, even though it's a great song it really has no real purpose for this MCD other then to make it longer. Anyway the 2 other songs are rare 'brasilian versions' of Thy Majestie's debut 'The Lasting Power'. Hywelbane is a 1 minute instrumental/atmopsheric song that prepares us for Facing the beast which is another fantastic epic hymn in the typical vein of Thy Majestie's Progressive/Power metal sound. Overall 92/100.