Heroes of Mighty Magic

Since Nuclear Blast is one of the biggest labels out there, they tend to focus on making the bands sound marketable. This wouldn't be a problem at all since it's beneficial for both the band and the label, but sadly this usually leads to bands sacrificing their unique sound so they can sell better (e.g. Destruction). Needless to say, when I realized that the sophomore album of my beloved dragon enthusiasts will be released by the aforementioned label giant, I started to worry.

As I already mentioned in my review on the debut, the band is heavily influenced by Rhapsody, but this time it sounds like they were watching way too many Disney movies during the making of this record. It feels like this album was intended to either be a soundtrack for the next ridiculously boring Disney movie or to be a gateway drug for little kids to get into metal music. I'm sure some people are thankful that they can get their kids into their favorite genre, but this doesn't feel like it was intended for people that are older than 8 years and have heard the debut or bands like Kamelot, Rhapsody or Stratovarius. Its cute and sparkly sound gets annoying around the 3rd or 4th track, but even before that it feels forced (pretty sure Nuclear Blast had something to do with this). What's even worse is that none of the songs have any impactful parts (except for maybe 1 or 2, but more on that later) or forceful if you will. The situation was so bad that I had to listen to the original CD version and the Japanese one too because I was hoping that it was only bad on the original one, but sadly, it wasn't any better on the Japanese edition either. All of this can be traced back to the production. While the debut was driven by the vocals and the synth, this time they are placed on the same level as every other instrument. Even when a (supposedly) blazing guitar solo starts, it has roughly the same volume as everything else so good luck finding anything interesting about the songs this way.

I suppose I should mention specifics now. The only song I enjoyed was Flight of the Sapphire Dragon. It sounds just like the rest of the album, but somehow Eriksson saves this one. It's such a shame that his voice goes to waste on such a bad record when he is clearly trying to deliver the same quality of the debut. The chorus isn't the only thing outstanding about this song though. It's the only song with a guitar solo that feels like it was meant to be a guitar solo and not just an extended lick.

That's about all the good things I can say about the record. The first 3 tracks provide absolutely nothing interesting thanks to the mediocre songwriting. There and Back Again, on the other hand, is a 10 minutes long "The Best Christmas Hits of All-time for the Whole Family" type of song. Needless to say, it gets boring around the 2nd minute because it sounds so stale. Riders of the Dawn is the other song that had the potential to be great. The chorus starts off promising: "Run, we will run with the power of the sun", but sadly it gets "Disneyfied" right after the second line. The album is almost two times as long as the debut was, meanwhile the material stuffed in it doesn't ask for playtime this long. For fuck's sake, did we really need an almost 7 (!!!) minutes long spoken-word track right after a 10 minutes long song??? The songs are just way too long in general thus they end up dragging way too much to be enjoyable. The very last track serves as an anthem of some sort, but guess what? When the album should have ended 3 songs ago, I don't want a pseudo-epic grand finale.

Overall this record not only has inferior production/mixing (which is dumb, considering it was done by the members), but it also has unacceptably boring songwriting. As I previously mentioned, only a single track managed to entertain me and even that was about as good as the worst track on the debut. So what do you do when your 2nd album is so bad that not even the "legacy" of the debut can save it from being a miserable failure? You get rid of the vocalist of course! The only member who didn't contribute to the shitfest songwriting on the record. Not a fairytale you should be interested in.

The highlight of the album is Flight of the Sapphire Dragon.

Deliberately campy power metal is obnoxious. I know I talked up Vanlade's concept album about Primal Rage like it was one of the seven ancient wonders of the world, but that's because its integrity wasn't compromised by the silly subject matter. You know why? It was dead serious. That band wrote music about giant farting witchdoctor gorillas like they meant it. Conversely, this recent trend of tongue-in-cheek "teehee, isn't this silly" power metal isn't doing itself any favors. With atom-thin originality masquerading as a stylistic choice, the result is like the swarm of Birdemic clones coming home to roost in Syfy's smelly chicken hutch. Heroes of Mighty Magic is one such chicken.

To begin with my most predictable complaint, nearly all compositions are beleaguered by sparkling synthesizer sweeps that turn rapid-fire power metal into the dancing hippo scene from Fantasia. Synth is deliberately contrived in such a way that's impossible to ignore; Twilight Force wanted to drive these compositions home with twinkling keyboard leads, and thought tracks like 'Powerwind' and 'Rise of a Hero' would be incomplete without a grandiose orchestral suite. One wonders, then, why orchestral suites sound more like 90's Yamaha cello samples, barely polyphonic and making no attempt to harmonize creatively. I suppose it's at least indicative of the unmemorable, self-congratulatory major-scale fanfare they introduce.

I imagine it's difficult to find a review that never mentions Rhapsody of Fire, as the likeness is unmistakable. Both have a compulsion to praise themselves with increasingly histrionic setpieces, not to mention a compulsion to repeat themselves like Foghorn Leghorn if he was a UFC commentator. It's okay when a chorus reiterates itself every now and again, testing the waters to see if anything sticks, but Twilight Force just beats you over the head with it. I soon lost track of the amount of times I completely zoned out, only to snap back to reality and realize I've treated the last few minutes of their triumphant gloating like I treat my horoscope. And yes, I was masochistic enough to retrace my steps every time it happened, and no, I didn't miss anything.

Admittedly I think 'To the Stars' and the title track are exceptions to many of the above-stated rules. The latter, despite being far too ponderous for its own good, offers plenty of stratospheric vocals and scintillating solos, and thus sounds like an invigorating companion piece to Inhuman Rampage-era DragonForce. Similarly, 'To the Stars' offers significantly advanced songwriting, evoking the power of Angra and Galneryus with intricately laid-out hooks and a symphonic element that effectively punctuates the elaborate riffing.

But alas, Heroes of Mighty Magic is blemished by a plastic production, a pompous and inexcusably samey approach to songwriting, a lingering stench of corporate cynicism, and some truly legendary timewasting like the spoken-word 'Epilogue'. For anyone who really loves this album, I want to know something. I want to know how you feel about the progenitors of power metal. Like Rainbow Rising, for instance. Do you think that album needed one fifth of its entire runtime dedicated to a haggard old man reading a chapter from The Eye of Argon? Please explain your answer.

I'm an apologist for music most people consider cheesy. From Sonata Arctica to Power Quest to Dark Moor, I'm a sucker for soaring melodies, sweeping keyboards, double-bass assaults, and rapidfire tempos. The guitars don't always take center-stage in these kinds of bands; often, the keyboards and vocal melodies dominate, and theatricality is often more important than aggression. All that is fine; that's certainly no obstacle to me loving an album.

But come on, man, you've gotta give me something. You've gotta have some semblance of guitar work clearly audible in the mix most of the time if you want your music to qualify as metal. Double-bass drumming alone doesn't make a song metal. If fellow Swedes Amaranthe, who at least are a guitar-driven band, don't qualify for Metal-Archives, then I don't know what right Twilight Force has to be here. Because on key songs on this album, like 'Battle of Arcane Might' and 'To the Stars', the guitars are practically inaudible; they're stretched so thin that one has to make an active effort to hear them. The typical experience of listening to this album is to hear nothing but layer after layer after layer after layer of keyboards, with double-bass drums pounding away underneath. It's not that they're bad songs -- in fact, they're pretty good songs! It's that I really just don't think you can stretch the boundaries of metal so far that essentially guitar-less songs still count. When the guitars do kick in -- listen to 2:30 in 'Riders of the Dawn', which features the album's mostly instantly catchy chorus -- it's bafflingly good: bafflingly, because one is prompted to ask why they hell they're hiding the guitarists when they are so competent. (Yes, there are allegedly two guitarists in this band.) Why do good guitar players agree to play in bands like these?

There is more than one review on this website apologizing for the wildly imbalanced production on this album by parroting the band's narcissistic claim that they have produced the album for "fidelity" -- rather than, say, loudness. How is it that no one has yet called them on this ridiculous, empty crap? 'Fidelity' just means 'quality.' What are they talking about? Do other bands not try to mix their songs for quality? This is just empty puffery for their typical fanboys: people who don't actually like metal very much but enjoy the novelty of an 'EPIC!!!!' musical act. Claims like these belong next to Wintersun's crap about playing 'majestic epic technical symphonic theatrical film score melodic death metal' or whatever (I'm sure I forgot a few terms there).

The more I write, the more irritable I become toward this album, especially as I consider that I can scroll down the review section and see glowing review after glowing review. But still: there are just too many good melodies on here to give the album anything less than a 60%. Try as I might, I can't dislike the choruses to 'Battle of Arcane Might' or 'Riders of the Dawn'; even the chorus of 'Powerwind', which sounds like it has been lifted from a children's television program, is sickeningly catchy. Unfortunately, the two lengthier numbers -- the title track and (surprise!) an ode to Tolkien -- which by all means ought to be the highlights of an 'epic' power metal album -- both meander. This band has not yet figured out how to write a good song that doesn't stick to a pop song structure.

Finally, I must credit this band for its shamelessness in naming its album 'Heroes of Mighty Magic' -- which, by the way, is an excellent title insofar as it indicates exactly what you're in for. It takes balls to be so flagrantly ridiculous. The fact is that these Swedes are not being at all ironic -- they really put their heart and soul into their magical musical quest to ride with fairies on a purple dragon over the rainbow. They're shamelessly themselves and don't care what I think. I suppose there's something metal about that.

Admittedly, I am a sucker for all things power metal. Give me those double bass orgies, those sweeping solos, those soaring vocals - I am up for all that and more.

However, I can't but admit that the hype surrounding the latest Nuclear Blast power metal protegés from Sweden, Twilight Force, is somewhat lost on me. Don't get me wrong; I've seen the band live and know that they are all apt musicians; however while I found their debut album, "Tales of Ancient Prophecies" just above average and nowhere near the almost second musical coming of J.C. that it was made out to be in internet forums, I can even less grasp the copious amounts of praise their second outing "Heroes of Mighty Magic" is getting from fans and press alike.

So obviously, the title alone, with it's play on the "Heroes of Might & Magic" computer game series, suggests that this band doesn't take itself too seriously, and that is by no means a bad thing. It works quite well for Gloryhammer, who are somewhat of the same ilk even if they are even more openly a parody band, and it should work quite well for Twilight Force. After all, which other fantasy metal band do you know that has not one but two really good guitarists who can also perfectly cosplay elves? Add to that their really talented singer Christian Eriksson, and what could possibly go wrong for a classic 90s style power metal band?

The answer is, unfortunately, everything.

And the reason for that is that both songwriting and production of "Heroes of Mighty Magic" are all over the place here. The songwriting is abysmally unfocused, with endless layers of overly cheesy orchestra samples and keyboards just piled on top of each other, drowning out any resemblance of "guitars" or "metal" the songs might have had, and even completely obscuring the (good!) vocal work - seriously, more often than not the vocals are barely audible in the terrible, terrible mix that lacks any sort of punch or dimension. The band has claimed they produced the album this way to bring in more "dynamic" for the listener, in the vein of old-school rock bands of the 70s; unfortunately, all they achieved was just the opposite.

None of the supposed "hooks" of this album stick with you, and with only a very few notable exceptions like "Flight of the Sapphire Dragon" or "To The Stars", even after several spins of the album I still have a hard time separating one song from the other.

But not only singer "Chrileon" suffers from the production, the two guitarists meet the same fate, which is particularly unfortunate for guitarist Lynd, who can shred with the best of them at Dragonforce speeds if need be. Disappointing then, that his quality work is inaudible on this record, despite most certainly being there; just only covered under layers upon layers of orchestral muck.

Seriously, the best thing about this production is the cover artwork, which is just amazing. That's what a cheesy power metal album artwork needs to look like, hands down. Too bad that the music behind it isn't the good kind of cheese, but the bad.

Thus, "Heroes of Mighty Magic" remains a very overrated piece of music, with potentially great performances by talented musicians obscured by monstrous amounts of pointless orchestral arrangements that serve absolutely no purpose and go absolutely nowhere, except to demonstrate that the band followed the paradigm "more is always more" on this album. Sorry guys - but it's true: sometimes less is actually more. Better luck next time.

Do you like Rhapsody but you think that they are not Disney enough? If you answered "yes" to this question then this album is for you. If you answered "no", don't close the page just yet, maybe you will be curious to hear the album after reading this review. Twilight Force, founded in 2011, put out their full-length debut in 2014 - "Tales of Ancient Prophecies". The only flaw the album had was its length, clocking at 36 minutes, and removing the narrations was more of an EP than a full-length. Fortunately, this problem no longer exists on "Heroes of Mighty Magic" since it has 1 hour and 10 minutes of epic dragons, magic and orchestrations. They are also quickly earning a name for themselves since they have supported Sonata Arctica and, more recently, Sabaton, two giants of the current power metal scene.

Looking at the album cover, made by Kerem Beyit, you get a pretty good idea of what you might expect to hear. A dragon spitting purple flames (how metal is that?!), a starry sky and, on the back cover, a castle that almost resembles the Disney one. If this isn't epic enough for you, in the booklet you can read the story of the characters of Twilight Force including their stats and a detailed map of the Twilight Kingdoms. Metal doesn't get more epic than this, I can assure you that.

Moving on to the release itself, the production was made to get "maximum fidelity and not loudness". While the guitars are, of course, existent they were pushed back giving space to the orchestrations to shine and to have a bigger role than in "Tale of Ancient Prophecies". With this in consideration, don't expect to hear tons of guitar riffs. The album's orchestrations composed by the keyboardist Blackwald are definitely one of the highlights, having various layers and instruments (they even have Glockenspiels!) emphasizing the "symphonic" part of their style and sometimes the "Disney" part. You are bound to get lost in the magic world forged by the orchestrations and almost causing you to forgot that you are listening to a metal album and not an epic classical album, being "Guardian of the Seas" a good example of that.

Moreover, all the members deserve a praise on the album. The vocalist Chrileon, owning a "battle cry" as a special skill, has a fabulous range hitting the high notes really well but still making the lyrics perceptive. The drummer, with its "infinite vitality, does a tremendous job through the record. Also, even if this isn't an guitar oriented album, the guitars absolutely shine especially in the solos part. This album also has two guests participating with their vocal capabilities, each of them being on one of the two long songs of the album. The frontman of Sabaton does a return performing on the title track, contrasting well with Chrileon using his heavier voice. The other guest, and no surprises here since he has probably participated in almost every power metal band that exists, is Fabio Leone taking part in "There and Back Again", making this song the most similar to Rhapsody (and this is a good thing).

The album ends with a narration, the "Epilogue" and it is encouraged to hear it with Headphones since it is a binaural beating. Clocking at almost seven minutes, it could be a little shorter, but that more of a personal opinion than a flaw. Just sit back and appreciate the story as the final track it perhaps one of the most memorable pieces that Twilight Force has done: a hymn dedicated to the fans, a perfect way to close a perfect album.

To sum up, this album is a remarkable journey to the Twilight Kingdoms that every metal (and non-metal) fan should hear and have in its collection. To the people that answered "no" to the opening question of the review, I hope that it got your interest. If it didn't, listen to it anyway, you might get surprised since this is one of the best symphonic power metal albums ever released.

"So, behold the flight of the sapphire dragon,
Soaring through the skies once again"

Do you like cheese? Do you like symphonic power metal? If you answered "yes" to both questions, this album might be for you. If you answered "no", just move along and ignore this. Heroes of Mighty Magic is the cheesiest album, as if the cover and title didn't give it away, that I've heard. Imagine if DragonForce, Rhapsody and Disney had a baby. That baby would be this album. Epic songwriting, epic and technical solos, and an overall positive and joyful atmosphere (more than your average power metal album).

The album kicks off with Battle of Arcane Magic, a song I didn't initially like and made me stay as far away as I could from this album. Almost two months later I decided to give it another chance given the hype some power metal pages on Facebook gave it. Now I am here loving this album. The guitar leads and orchestration work very good in unison and are a little taste of what is yet to come. Flight of the Sapphire Dragon may be my favorite track on the album; the choirs are pretty damn cheesy, but awesome, and the solo is so good it will melt your face. This song showcases the most how goof of a singer Chrileon is, I hope to see him one day form part of Ayreon. There and Back again is another highlight with powerful vocals and epic guitar leads working along some choirs. Fabio Lione makes a great guest appearance on this song and it is great. The title track closes off the album before a spoken-word epilogue and a brief, orchestral tune, and it does so in a great way. There even is a guest appearance by Joakim Brodén, and is raspy vocals make a great contrast to those of Chrileon. The music, again, is epic and uplifting.

The bonus CD on the special edition includes orchestral and instrumental versions of some songs, an edit of There and Back Again and a chip-tune version (as if the cheese wasn't enough already) of Powerwind. Very enjoyable bonus tracks.

The lyrics tell a story but I haven't read them yet, I can only hope that said story is as epic and cheesy as the music and that they continue it like Rhapsody once did with their Emerald Sword Saga. Twilight Force even created a map for their story, which makes me want to read the lyrics even more.

Overall, this is a very enjoyable, with mountains of cheese to share release. As a fantasy nerd these type of albums usually make me happy, and one of the most pleasant surprises this year. I like this even more every time I hear it, my favorite power metal album so far in 2016 along with the new Dark Forest.

I discovered Twilight Force shortly after the release of their first album in 2014. For me, it was my favorite album of that year. "Heroes of Mighty Magic" is definitely going to be in my top 10, but not as high as I'd like it to be because of one reason: the production. The entire album is plastered in an echo that removes a great deal of the power from the instruments. The guitars sound weak, the drums sound flat, and the vocals sound like they were recorded at a live performance. I can't even hear a bass due to the overwhelming amount of orchestral barrages within each song.

I really like this album. Every single song embodies what I crave when I want really cheesy power metal. "Riders of the Dawn" has a chorus that makes me want to flip my desk and scream, "Fuck yeah!" "Battle of Arcane Might" also has a great chorus mixed in with gloriously cheesy orchestral flourishes. "Powerwind" is one of those songs that is great through the whole song and feels charged with emotion. Each song sounds rich and I feel like there's always something going on. This album definitely fulfills the orchestral requirement.

Chrileon has some absolutely stunning vocals. He hovers around the high range for the most part and occasionally goes supersonic. He definitely does not have to struggle to reach those soaring heights. I like the drumming but I feel it can get repetitive at times. It mostly keeps the songs going at a blistering pace. I rarely noticed the guitars in a prominent position. The riffs definitely don't stand out. This album is heavily vocal-driven. The guitars are so buried in the mix that they are only noticeable in solos where they sound like they're coming from a mile away because of the echo.

Overall, I really love this album but hate the production. I really hope they choose a different direction for the next album as far as production goes.

Just look at that artwork, a purple dragon puking purple magic over a moonlit starry sky while faeries stroll the land... This is either offensively corny or a Disney musical. Twilight Force has made a huge vertical leap since their debut, "Tales of Ancient Prophecies" was, more or less, a classic power metal album, not truly driven by the guitar riffs, but topped in solos and keyboard flourishes. The record was very well received, and I absolutely loved it! It wasn't perfect by any means, had a really cheesy ballad and a bunch of narration in between, but the proper songs were spectacular and had unparalleled energy. 2 years have passed and since then, they have been "acquired" by a large label, and most of you probably understand what that means. Most times when this happens, the band loses some musical integrity and the bands go out of their way to do something to appease some group of fans, instead of writing what comes from their heart. Surprisingly, this is not the case, at all! If anything, Twilight Force pushes the power metal envelope further, putting out something that was never quite heard in the genre. Would you believe me if I said it sounds like Disney metal...?

There were three singles released for this record, "To the Stars" is an energetic affair that manages to capture the essence of Dragonforce perfectly, "Powerwind" is a pot of honey and sugar with a chorus so fucking frolic, it will almost make you nauseous, but not quite. And then there is "Battle of Arcane Might", which isn't a song that stands for being out of this world or anything, but it has a moment towards the end that I absolutely love, it starts at 3:35 and it's basically a classical fanfare. Now, symphonic power metal has been around for a while, and they all do have their share of symphony going on in the background, sometimes even bringing it up to the spotlight, but no one pulled a classical fanfare like Twilight Force does in this song and in this album. "But what's so special about that HammerOfDeath?" you inquisitively ask. Well, my dear reader, when you have an unhealthy love for street marching bands, you just dig the shit out of fist pumping, foot stomping, classical march music.

The music here is still power metal on a molecular level, but every audible aspect of it has moved on to new dimensions, bringing along everything that is epic in the classical genre. Guitars here are but an afterthought, not the focus at all, nor do they try to pretend it is, it simply isn't. I guarantee you the songwriting process starts at the piano, and guitars are added much later to adorn and give that power metal feel. This actually brings me to an important point, the one where a lot of listeners disregard this album for having a prominent orchestra and 0 guitar riffs. Unless you're the kind of moron that subscribes to the ideology of "No riffs, not music!", having an orchestra is not a valid reason to bash on any album. I've even read some dimwits arguing that the choruses are bad... Holy shit! This album has some of the most interesting and enjoyable choruses I've ever heard. They are composed of multiple melodies (or parts) that are as epic and triumphant as they can be, as opposed to a chorus that is a repetition of a word or set of words. Yes, those work too, but they're certainly not as sensational as a proper multi-layered chorus. Just listen to the chorus of the title track, there's like 3 or 4 parts that stand on their own, but no! Because Twilight Force is filled to the brim with melodic ideas, they simply make the chorus as intricate, full and glorious as possible.

Vocalist, whose character is called Chrileon, does a far better job here. He used to try these really high notes on the debut, but he couldn't quite do it and whatever he was singing would become incomprehensible. This time, he doesn't go as high, staying in a more comfortable range and doing an admirable job, often sounding like Fabio Lione and even Joacim Cans on his early days. The guitars are, for lack of a better word, underwhelming, but only if you're coming into this album expecting a guitar masterpiece, it fucking isn't! For riffing, they use extremely simple chord progressions and have one galloping riff they like to throw in their songs with a slight variation. Then there's licks and solos everywhere, and they're all really well done, check "Guardian of the Seas" for some tasty guitar work. Even if you like to rail on the lack of proper guitar work, there's no denying the guy has tremendous talent and is a proficient guitarist. If you still didn't quite get it, just pay attention to the production, clearly oriented towards symphony, providing has much instrumental fidelity has possible, and disregarding loudness entirely. And no, the production is not bad or thin, it's actually quite well done for classical music.

The orchestra is without a doubt the highlight, I mean these guys really make it work, considering it's all made in computers. You can tell that it's artificial for the most part, those synths really give it away, but that doesn't really bother me, as this doesn't have the charm of a classical ensemble, only the drive. French horns, flutes, harpsichord, violin, they're all there, rarely in the spotlight, but all moving as one. However, among the sea of synthesized instruments, there is one that I absolutely adore, it's the glockenspiel (the metal xylophone). Even in a huge orchestra, that little guy stands out like Pee Wee sticks out in the local theater, each little hit distinctively protruding from everything else, adding another layer of magic goodness. The glockenspiel is used quite often and admirably in Heroes of Mighty Magic, each strike of the metal plate adding a little bit of fluffiness, each salvo of dings adding a new layer of harmony, and certainly, one of the biggest contributors to the permeating magical feel.

It's difficult to mention musical references for this album because the end result is so different from what we are used to in power metal. Without a doubt, Rhapsody of Fire is one of them, flaming vividly in the song "Riders of the Dawn", Aquaria surfacing in "There and Back Again", one of the epics. However, it's evident they pay tribute to no one in particular and attempt themselves to achieve their own brand of jubilant sonicscapes. Crafting heavily layered arrangements, sprinkled with catchy melodies and moments of glory, hiding details and intricacies amidst harmony, resulting in music that is as complex has accessible.

Sadly, I can't say everything is truly perfect, "Epilogue", a track following the final epic, should not have been included on the actual album, it should be an extra or a bonus track. Although endearing in its execution, 6 minutes and a half of spoken word has literally no repetition value. It's cool to give us a glimpse of the world they built, it's not cool to preach it in 6 minutes. Immediately after, you get something that only a handful of people will enjoy, including myself, a national anthem... The national anthem for the Knights of Twilight's Might (I know I know, get back to your seat). To many, this is far too cheesy and just completely useless, but to a very small percent, this a delicious treat that closes the record masterfully.

Conclusion? Well, this turned out to be a very long review, but honestly, it's quite simple, if you like epic classical music and the full blown silliness that is modern power metal, you should enjoy the shit out of this. However, if the simple mention of the word cheesy makes you nauseous, stay very far away from this album. Heroes of Mighty Magic is the most disgusting cake of sugar, spice, and everything nice, these were the ingredients chosen to create the perfect little heroes, but keyboardist Blackwald accidentally added an extra ingredient to the concoction, faeries... Thus, The Heroes of Mighty Magic were born, using their ultra-super mighty magic, they have dedicated their lives to fighting crime and the forces of evil.

One look at the album cover for Twilight Force’s “Heroes of Mighty Magic” should tell you everything you need to know about this band. If you guessed that they’re essentially a Rhapsody clone with the occasional unique moment, you certainly would have been right if you were talking about their debut record, “Tales of Ancient Prophecies”. To take it a step further, Twilight Force’s first album is not just a crowning achievement for power metal in terms of great songwriting, but even better than any album Rhapsody has ever released.

This undoubtedly creates astronomical expectations that the band could never meet with their follow-up. The more concerning trend, however, is the frolicking seen in the crowd at the band’s concerts, the extended lore and mythology surrounding the band’s members (“characters” might be a more accurate term), and the general desire to become more grandiose and over the top than ever. “Heroes of Mighty Magic” is the result of Twilight Force buying into their own hype. No longer content with writing good songs, the band set out to make the most ridiculous album ever created. And to their credit, they succeeded. If you’re coming into this record as a fan of the band already, you’re going to be disappointed with the first listen. I certainly was.

This is because “Heroes of Mighty Magic” simply doesn’t have anything as immediately good as most of the last record. The closest contender is “To The Stars”, which is the song most similar to the band’s old work. It is the fastest song on the record, and makes use of minimal other frustrating sound effects (more on this later). But the other reason this album will cause initial disappointment is because it is a major grower. Aside from the aforementioned “To The Stars”, “Riders of the Dawn” stands out as the only other first-time highlight. This track is the most energetic; all of the songs are fast, but this song feels genuinely exciting. Chrileon’s performance in the chorus is instantly engaging, and will have you singing along quickly.

The remaining songs aren’t quite as obvious. Both “Battle of Arcane Might” and “Powerwind” stand out as highlights, but this is largely because they were released far enough in advance of the album that they have had more time to sink in. They certainly aren’t without their flaws. The latter track in particular displays a disturbing tendency towards using chimes (or some similar instrument) that appears all too often on this record. Indeed, this is the biggest flaw with “Heroes of Mighty Magic”: it is essentially Disney metal.

I don’t mean that the record is too happy and optimistic, but rather that it literally has sections that you could play side-by-side with a Disney movie and likely couldn’t tell the difference. If you were to remove the guitars, which are already hidden in the background of many songs, it would be impossible to tell. The intro to “Guardian of the Seas” and the middle interlude in “There and Back Again” both have no guitars, and it would be absolutely impossible to decipher which is which in a blind test. Everyone loves Disney, but let’s be honest here, good songwriting beats out symphonic soundtracks every time. The band often accomplishes this through the use of frilly sound effects that are totally out of place or overdone. “Rise of A Hero” is the song where Twilight Force most gets carried away; this track prances around aimlessly for a while before a female (or child?) greets the listener with a couple lines of lyrics that have to be pulled from one of Disney’s many musicals. While many of the other songs actually pull off the Disneyisms well, this track is a major failure, and the one truly weak song on the record.

Despite all of the pessimism so far, there’s a lot to like about this album. There are two lengthy songs: “There and Back Again” and the title track. The latter is the more immediate winner. It feels like a true epic, and is a majestic way to finish the record (there are two more songs, but neither is truly a song). Sabaton’s Joakim Broden appears on this track, and while his performance is not as inspiring as it was on the band’s first record, he definitely adds some much needed oomph to an otherwise light record. “There and Back Again” doesn’t have the same grandeur about it, but it does have many of the album’s most intriguing melodies. This track features an appearance from Fabio Lione, but you wouldn’t know it unless you’re really paying attention. Put simply, he sounds like a slightly aged version of Chrileon. Nevertheless, this song sounds more like Rhapsody than any other track on the record, and so that alone makes it a winner. The chorus does remind one of something out of Aladdin, but hey, if you made it far enough into this record to listen to this song, that probably won’t bother you.

In terms of the shorter songs, most of the best tracks have already been discussed above, but “Keepers of Fate” is another song that stands out, for no other reason than having a few catchy melodies. Most songs on this record can boast that claim, but “Keepers of Fate” is a cut above some of the more predictable tracks like “Guardian of the Seas” and “Flight of the Sapphire Dragon”. Surprisingly, the band resisted the temptation to put a ballad on this record, which was a wise decision. The ballad on the debut was enjoyable, but at 70 minutes, this record needs all of the energy it can muster to keep it going, which it certainly achieves for the first 62 minutes.

The most confusing moments of the album come at the end. After the brilliant title track comes “Epilogue”. This song is 6 and a half minutes of narration, without any of the theatrics of Manowar’s “The Warrior’s Prayer” (which was already a painful effort). This should come as no surprise; the first album had a couple of these narrations which were awful, but they were more bearable because they were shorter and broken up across the album. The final track, “Knights of Twilight’s Might”, acts as the band’s national anthem. It would not be out of place being played before any sporting event, but holds absolutely no relevance to power metal or the first 10 tracks on the record. For the sub-2 minutes that it runs, it is ok for a cheap laugh, but is never worth repeating.

The elephant in the room at this point is the production. Each of the three songs that were released before the album came out sounded different from one another. The biggest issue is not so much that the guitars are hidden in the background (they will pop out often enough), but more that there are so many layers of keyboards, symphonics, and other twiddly sound effects that it makes for a very inconsistent result. Some moments have an unbearable amount of glory with incoherent clashing sounds, while others work perfectly. It’s unclear to me if the strange production meshes together better after numerous listens, or if the songs have grown on me enough to overlook it. Either way, this record is going to suck the first time around, and then suck less and less each time until you realize it is a brilliant concoction that has no business working, but somehow does.

Amidst the wild production, the guitars always come to life when there are solos. The shredding on this album is a strange beast. There are the random flares that bands like Pathfinder adore, but there are also a lot of dedicated solo sections. These solos feel somewhat like an exercise in technique though. They consist of sweeping, tapping, and sweep-tapping, but what makes them less compelling is the fact that they’re almost entirely straight 16th-notes. There’s absolutely no variety in terms of speed or technique, and the result is that they all feel common place. The first record was no stranger to ridiculous shredding, but speedy fretwork was interwoven with more memorable leads. “Heroes of Mighty Magic” can make no such claim.

It’s easy to be critical of this record because it isn’t what I wanted. “Tales of Ancient Prophecies” is probably a top-10 power metal album for me, and “Heroes of Mighty Magic” feels like almost an entirely different band. But the reality is that Twilight Force has managed to carve a unique niche within a fairly common sound (for now; there will no doubt be imitators in a few years), and they have done so convincingly. It doesn’t mean that every song on this record is a winner, but if you could cut it down to 9 songs (removing “Rise of a Hero”, “Epilogue”, and “Knights of Twilight’s Might”), you’d have an unstoppable release. Even with its slightly bloated playtime, “Heroes of Mighty Magic” is a stellar album. Give it time, and you will be rewarded!

Originally written for Skull Fracturing Metal
http://skullfracturingmetal.blogspot.ca/

Perhaps it's because they had the most ridiculous ad campaign, with a guy from the band speaking in the cheesiest "I-am-an-old-prophet-come-children-and-hear-my-tale" voice ever, complete with the lore of the fictional characters of the band who dress up like the part, or maybe it's just because Nuclear Blast has a giant fanbase, but Heroes of Mighty Magic is one of the most-talked about albums I have seen on the Internet. And I can definitely understand that. There are a lot of haters for this album and a lot that will die for it, and this whole album had great potential and great hype, but man, listening back at this, it's obvious it's is only for a certain group. There are so many things Twilight Force does right, and so many things they do wrong, and even the things they do right hurt the album in general.

So I guess that I should start by addressing the biggest complaint and confusion of metalheads all over: the mixing. You know how some people (yourself possibly included) get upset when bands go for the symphonics and feel that they are more important than the metal? Well, that is Twilight Force. Twilight Force knows this too. They even claim, and I quote "The album is mastered for optimal fidelity, not for maximum loudness." If over-the-top symphonics even bolder than in Wintersun's Time I turn you off, then I guarantee you will get nothing from this album. The guitar takes more of a background role in many areas, and even if you try, sometimes you won't even hear them. Fortunately, the symphonic are grand and magical, having that overwhelming feeling, sucking you right into the scene...

...If the scene is of any importance to you. Lyrically, the album is adequate, but not that amazing. Just your normal tropes of cheesy power metal, nothing thought-provoking like Sonata Arctica, nothing silly but clever like Gloryhammer, and potentially a storyline that's not as clear or well-written as Rhapsody. It's just your stereotypical questing and battles and magnificent dragons and prophecy. Nothing creative or intuitive.

Speaking of prophecy, the last two tracks will be annoying for those who want straight up metal, or at least some music. Epilogue is 6 minutes of spoken dialogue in that cheesy voice I mentioned earlier, and Knights of Twilight's Might could potentially be a cool anthem, but isn't important or adds to the album at all, except maybe even more silliness.

All of the rest of the songs are really good, though many of them follow the same formula, quite disappointingly. Again, there is always an overdose on orchestrations, and the lyrics aren't that amazing, but I can say that the band is quite talented. The musicianship is there, the solos are good, "Chrileon" sings like Dragonland's Jonas Heidgert
(though unfortunately his range is always high, which gets quite annoying), and even if they follow a formula, the songs all have different tones and luckily are well-composed. I can't really say that each song differs in a way where I could potentially describe each of them uniquely, unfortunately.

I still love and support this album though. It's all good fun for me, and if you aren't trying to overanalyze what makes this album good and what doesn't, and just sit back and let the magically-themed music sink in, it's quite a thrill ride, even if it doesn't live up to the other greats in any particular way. This band is very new to the scene, and I feel that they are still learning about how to make a good album, though admittedly their predecessor actually had some more substance in its structure. This will strike out for those that feel like the power metal community needs something as thoughtful or complex as any large band, but for me, this was a lot of fun to listen to, and is perfect when you need an uplifting tone that comes straight from the fantasy genre. Maybe the score will go down in the future, but it was cracking fun to listen to this, and I'm not bored of it as of late, and as long as the music made me feel good, that's all I care.

Favorite tracks: To the Stars (excluding the "Calling Your Name" part which seems to be too loud), There and Back Again (one of the best epics I have heard as of late), and Powerwind (which is pretty much nothing but sugar and fairies, but whatever)

Least favorite tracks: Epilogue (because I wasted over 6:30 listening to a guy with a stupid voice talk about some story that was very unclear throughout the album)


EDIT: APRIL 5, 2017 (Attempted to create a consistent format between my reviews)

The path to becoming an ancient symphonic power metal wizard apologist is not all that different from any other road to being a metal grandpa. It comes with the same silvery beard extending almost to ZZ Top territory, there is plenty of yelling at all those dang modern kids to "get off my metal!", though some might argue that the pointy hat that covers one's balding head clashes a bit with the denim and leather. The author of this review recently became aware of his entry into the ranks of symphonic power metal grandpas with the recent release of Twilight Force's sophomore album Heroes Of Mighty Magic, when the feelings of nostalgia for the days of Fairyland having Elise Martin at the helm prophecizing Of Wars In Osyrhia and further back still when Rhapsody first penned their Symphony Of Enchanted Lands. Naturally the youth and relative inexperience of this Swedish outfit can be overlooked by someone born in the ancient era of 1980, for their hearts burn with the necessary fire and their imaginations have found themselves in the same high-fidelity production of high fantasy escapism.

Reminiscing on his own days as an undisciplined youth, this review's author was often wont to complain over an alleged lack of riffs in certain symphonic quarters, but with experience comes a heightened perspective on how such arrangements tend to work. While outfits of days yonder such as Epica and Rhapsody (Of Fire) were largely based in riff happy guitar themes and balanced them out with the massive, Hollywood-like orchestrations that came with the package, the later generation that was set in motion by Fairyland and a few others has a fairly different approach that is emulated on this album to the point of exaggeration, namely utilizing the guitar as a lead instrument and as part of the rhythm section rather than that subtle middle-ground of riff-happy metal where the guitars drive the songs as a leading rhythm instrument. Here the orchestra, vocals and drums tend to drive the songs a bit more, while the guitars and bass sort of bolster the underlying speed metal tendency of the metal-side of the sub-genre. Naturally the guitars see a fair degree of lead activity and harmonized interplay that rests somewhere in technical prowess between Rhapsody and Pathfinder, occasionally veering towards the Dragonforce-inspired madness of the latter (see the 10 minute speeding musical homage to The Hobbit in "There And Back Again").

In essence, this album finds itself in a very similar place to its surprisingly competent predecessor Tales Of Ancient Prophecies, only with better narrations and a longer duration that makes it come off less like a long EP and more like a true full length album. The vocal display is still wildly over the top and reminiscent of that sort of combination of Michael Kiske's smoothness and Fabio Lione's operatic intensity, though maybe a slight bit more measured and less reliant on exaggerated glass-shattering high notes. In its place is a far more ambitious songwriting approach that occasionally emulates the extended epic formula of Iron Maiden and late 80s Helloween, spearheaded particularly by the elaborate unfolding of speeding symphonic landscapes of "There And Back Again" and the title song "Heroes Of Might Magic". But even with shorter and more fanfare oriented speeders like "Riders Of The Dawn" and "Battle Of Arcane Might", that feeling of massiveness is consistently observed. If one wished to distill what this album listens like to two single words, they would be massive and fast. It doesn't quite get to the level of intense speed that typified earlier Dragonforce offerings, but this is an album built entirely of fast-paced majesty after the mold of a number of turn-of-the-millennium albums where ballads and mid-paced songs were generally cut from the equation in favor of more fast songs.

Between the raging comeback album that Rhapsody Of Fire had earlier this year and this shameless excursion into the world of high fantasy, it seems there is little sign of this often derided yet tenacious subset of power metal going away anytime soon. If there is any flaw to be found here, it is that the band packed so much music and over-the-top extras into this baby that it seems a jarring change compared to the fairly short yet near equally grandiose debut. There are plenty of reminders that this is still the same one, not the least being yet another auspicious guest vocal spot for Sabaton lead vocalist Joakim Broden, though they've upped their cred with the scene a bit further still with including Fabio Lione in the mix for one of their extended epics, further drawing their sound into close comparison with their Italian contemporaries Ancient Bards. That's the beauty of this music when you're a stubborn old metal grandpa with a goofy wizard's hat, you can actually fulfill the lyrics of Prince's "1999" in perpetuity, though perhaps not in the way he may have intended. There are no compromises here, no attempts at introducing any outside influences to either ground or normalize the style, just a constant stream of epic pomp and bluster that will sate the faithful and revolt the detractors.

Later submitted to (The Metal Observer) on March 7, 2017.

So somehow, for some utterly bizarre reason, Sweden's Twilight Force has become something of an internetical battleground. Power metal's answer to Enmity, if you will. While Heroes of Mighty Magic and Illuminations of Vile Engorgement have precisely dick in common apart from some of the cringiest album titles this side of Japan, they both seem to have become reviewing warzones, with hyperbolic scores from either side of the spectrum taking a stand for or against the very foundations of the bands they dissect. I once heard Enmity described as "what death metal must sound like to people who don't listen to death metal", and considering the endless conga line of cliches that Twilight Force provides here, I can only assume that's the same perception given here, only for that super melodic and overly bombastic subniche of flower metal.

The reason I find it so strange that Twilight Force has become the hill to die on is because it's not really spectacular one way or the other. Yeah it's sugary, yeah it's basically riffless and just loaded with melodies and orchestration, yeah it's just a bunch of dumb cliches strung together with even more cliches, but as a seasoned vet for this kind of music I can say with confidence that it isn't really done in any way that's either fantastic or horrendous. It's very middling in every sense of the word. There are huge stretches where seemingly nothing happens, there are great ideas that are executed poorly and bad ones that are done with flair and charisma, and there are high points and low points. Every god damned thing about this album averages out. Logically, this means it should be totally skippable and just fade into the white noise of the metal world, but in all honesty, I don't exactly agree with my own assessment. Every time I listen to this, I like it a little bit more in spite of myself.

You see, this is the kind of thing that doesn't try to be anything new, and it doesn't really have to be. This is the kind of cheesy flower metal for fans of Rhapsody, Freedom Call, and Wisdom. It's bloated down with hundreds of orchestrations and choirs, but that's sort of what it wants to do anyway and it's not like they totally suck at it so who am I to judge? It's not like the new Sabaton album where it's clearly meant to be fluffy pop metal but can't write a good hook or memorable song to save its life, this is more like one of the lesser Rhapsody albums like Triumph or Agony where it has a vision that it adheres to wonderfully but whiffs on half of the ideas and ends up presenting listeners with a mixed bag of sorts. Tracks like "Powerwind", "Battle of Arcane Might", and "To the Stars" have awesome choruses that carry the songs with soaring majesty, then we have tracks like "Guardian of the Seas" and "Riders of the Dawn" which have excellent moments marred by easily avoidable issues, tracks like "Keepers of Fate" and "There and Back Again" that just drag on forever and never do anything interesting, and on and on and on. It's sort of bizarre because every song is so similar to each song preceding it but each one manages to succeed or fail in a completely different way.

What this tells me is that the songwriting in general is just really shaky. They can beat Rhapsody at their own game on occasion, and other times I just scratch my head and wonder why they bothered putting such obvious filler songs on an album that could have been much more focused. "Riders of the Dawn" has the potential to be the best song on the album since the chorus is so magnificent (and this is the type of album where the songs live and die on the strength of the choruses), but with the production being so wonky and focused entirely on vocals, keys, and drums, it just ends up sounding like a flat demo recording with just drums and vocals. That damn vocal line of "Run! We will run! With the power of the sun!" is so immediately ear catching but there is next to nothing happening around it so it just winds up being like an extremely impressive high bar routine where the gymnast misses the landing completely and winds up face first on the mat with their feet sticking up in the air like a Wile E. Coyote cartoon. Tracks like "Keepers of Fate" and "Rise of a Hero" just flitter by with no consequence whatsoever, which is a damn shame because they come between "Riders of the Dawn", a song with a ton of potential that ends up botched, and "To the Stars", one of the few tracks that I think is legitimately great the whole way through. This is a problem throughout the album, as the highlights are spread around so haphazardly that there wind up being nearly twenty minute stretches of lame, go-nowhere flower metal orchestrations blamping at you while you patiently wait for the next song with any sort of cohesion and goal to come back in and remind you why you bother listening to this dorky shit in the first place.

The aforementioned production is another sticking point with me. Normally I don't mind the rhythm guitars being completely buried in a style like this since they're the least important aspect and are really only there to play some rudimentary palm mutes to accentuate the drums, but they really push it to the extreme, to the point where they're basically nonexistent. What this does is leave us with an album that sounds like a collection of JRPG battle themes with power metal drums added on top of them. Now, considering just how many hours I've spent shunning the idea of making friends in favor of playing Suikoden alone in my bedroom, this sounds like something right up my alley, but in all honesty these aren't even great battle themes. Most of them are just cliche progressions and melodies that any mildly educated power metal fan has heard a million times before. I realize that's a little unfair since innovation isn't a requirement to be great, but it really does add to the boredom of listening to the whole album in one sitting. Listening to the assorted worthwhile tracks in bursts can be highly enjoyable, as the album certainly delivers on the promise of just being stupid cheeseball fun, but it's too long and overwhelming to really stand on its own as a full unit.

I didn't really have a place to mention it, but Joakim Broden from the ever persistent and ever shitty Sabaton makes a brief appearance on the title track, and his gruff baritone is actually a welcome change of pace from the Michael Kiske impressions that take up the rest of the album, but he's still a dude who hinges all of his charisma on the fact that he's different and forgets to actually be any good as a result. The album also ends on a nearly eight and a half minute epilogue, six and a half minutes of which are taken up by that same fucking terrible narration bullshit that plagued Rhapsody throughout even their best albums. Good holy christ that is the most annoying and unnecessary shit in the universe. Write a fucking book.

So all in all, I don't really know what to make of Heroes of Mighty Magic (lord I hate that title more than you will ever understand). There are enough tracks and moments to make a solid mini-LP but as a 70+ minute experience it's just exhausting. That earlier comment about this being what power metal probably sounds like to people who don't listen to power metal is 100% true. Every possible cliche you can imagine is shoved to the forefront and waggled in front of your face obnoxiously, so this is really one of those albums that had its fans the instant it was announced and nothing was ever going to sway them one way or the other. Overall it ends with a positive score because there are enough well done moments (mostly the choruses and a few assorted melodies and soloing sections) to ensure I'll come back for a quick bite every now and again, but it's just so pointless in the grand scheme of metal that I can't imagine this being viewed as anything other than "just another album" even one year from now. It's basically any given Rhapsody album only without the occasional "Holy Thunderforce" or "Reign of Terror" to help it blow by the competition.

This shouldn't be a battleground, it should just be yet another album with a few bright spots here and there that should be thrown on the pile and left there for the most part.


Originally written for Lair of the Bastard

Typing the title of this album is enough to give me heartburn. Heroes of Mighty Magic. Jesus. That's an awful title. I admit I wasn't really interested in this band's debut, though checking them out now, I can say it's not all that bad – just not my thing. But this new one is pretty lame, bloated and derivative.

The basic formula here boils down to pretty much every happy power metal band from the late 90s. Freedom Call and Rhapsody are the bulk of the influence here, with the harmonized, big choruses of the former and the dashing orchestrations and fluffy musical textures of the latter, but you can hear bits of old Gamma Ray and Helloween here and there, too on songs like “Keepers Of Fate.” But all of it is buried underneath the ass-load of Disney-style orchestral pomp covering every inch of this like a layer of sugary sweet frosting. The production is pretty thin and weak sounding, robbing the album of any power or energy or urgency it might have. But frankly, there isn't much of that to begin with.

The real issue here is just that the songwriting is boring. There are a couple flashes of a decent melody or a good chorus on some songs, especially opener “Battle Of Arcane Might” and “To The Stars,” both of which actually flash scraps of real inspiration. But don't worry, that's snuffed out quicker than a deer you just hit on the road with your car and had to put out of its mercy. Most of this is strictly eye-glazing dull. It's a slog to sit through because the songs are built around nearly identical choruses and song structures. The first two songs don't sound too bad at all, albeit not terribly inspired – but as the album slogs through the ten minute “There And Back Again,” with more weak production and more samey melodies, it just starts to become an interminable test of your endurance. And that's only track five.

The music in between the choruses is just a soggy run of cliché widdly-widdly-wee neoclassical power metal soloing and bouncy orchestrations and non-stop double bass drums. Singer Christian Eriksson has chops, but after over an hour, hearing him sing the exact same chorus melody on at least three quarters of these songs just gets old. So the album then becomes a stew of vaguely similarly sounding, speedy, ultimately faceless fantasy power metal mush. Every element of this album just works against it in the long run. The songwriting is about as formulaic as it gets, which eliminates any chance of being sucked in on that front, and the production could have saved this if it were glossy and punchy and ear-catching enough, but they don't have that going for them either.

Oh, sure, they do switch it up for the bouncy Rhapsody-style jaunt “Riders Of The Dawn,” and they add in Sabaton singer Joakim Broden on the ten minute title track, but neither of those things lingers in the ear in any meaningful way. The songs just don't latch onto any good grooves or emotional crests like this style needs. I am not asking for the band to start experimenting in a Sonata Arctica-esque way or haul out their 80s Ample Destruction riffs, but I am saying that this is subpar by the standards of its style. The "Epilogue" at the end is an excruciatingly bad seven fucking minutes of narration, which is incomprehensibly bad and I have no idea why the band wanted us to hear this. It's seriously just fucking awful and by far the nadir of the album.

I mean, at least they're taking it somewhat seriously – it's not a Gloryhammer-style farce where they're masking their lack of talent with a dose of self-parody, or something else like that. These guys seem serious, but they just don't have the talent to pull off the huge scope they were going for – not like Dragonland's Under The Grey Banner or the fantastic Blind Guardian release last year. Frankly, through all its fantastical posturing and ambitious leanings, nothing about this album feels fresh or interesting or well-written enough to go back to. I'll stick to my first two Freedom Call albums for this.

Phew. Thank Satan I made it to the end without repeating that fucking awful album title. I need to survive!

You know those albums from which you hear a single which later turns out to be the strongest on the album? Yeah... Well, that’s true here, but not even close to what you can expect from the horrid atrocity that is Heroes Of Might And Magic. Twilight Force got a bit of a rush through help of Youtube with hit song ‘The Power Of The Ancient Force’, released on debut album Tales of Ancient Prophecies (2014). Since then, Nuclear Blast has taken the band in, and the connection to the great has been’s of Falun, Sweden, couldn’t be exaggerated more. (I’m talking of course of Sabaton.) I wasn’t a fan really of the debut, but it had a Rhapsody like charm and sort of uniqueness to it, and with a major label backing them, it could - by all rights should - work. Now, Twilight Force have of course been greatly influenced by the aforementioned giants Rhapsody, but there are also large doses of Dragonforce in there, and Twilight Force have tried to land somewhere in between. However, where Rhapsody knew that less is more and Dragonforce made something similar but added +1000 speed in autotune (which is what failed them), Twilight Force has chosen a slightly different orientation.

Namely “crank it up!” More symphonics? Crank it up! More unnecessary orchestras? Crank it up, it’ll be epic! Turn every damn instrument up to eleven? Crank it up! The result? Everything sucks worse than a New Year’s hangover. On acid. Every component is cranked way up, which makes it impossible to find focus where it should be. Guitar solos are muddled by overly pompous orchestration - Philip Lind and “Aerendir” are both okay guitarists, though it can’t be heard very often as they’re drowned by every other fucking thing they needed to cram in. The vocals are drowned in big sounding, but shallow attempts at epic symphonics. Just one little tip guys, if you absolutely have to have choirs, it’d be damn nice to actually hear what they’re singing.

All of this is just twice as sad when there are things here which could have worked if done right. The opening track ‘Battle Of Arcane Might’ is an okay song (at least in comparison to the rest of the material), as is ‘To The Stars’. There are some melodies and guitar solos that kind of do their thing. It’s just that everything else is so over done. It’s all overflowing with cheesiness, and none of it is enough to lift anything above crappy. Now I’m a man who likes his power metal cheesy, but we don’t need the entire damn cheese factory - leave those cows alone, you bastards!

Christian Eriksson does have a voice made for melodic power, sporting hints of Joacim Cans (Hammerfall) and legendary Fabio Lione (Rhapsody) - the latter also being a guest on the album. It’s just that he never gets to live up to that potential what with all the trying to fit into every fucking power metal cliché there is. The choruses? None stick with you. As I said, Lione is a guest on the album, on ten minute ‘There And Back Again’, but he’s barely heard at all for crying out loud! That single point I’m awarding though, that’s Lione’s doing. Another guest vocalist is Joakim “Right on the finish line!” Brodén (Sabaton) and that’s enough about that.

Everything is just so fucking exaggerated it’s not even fun to make fun of it. At least Gloryhammer (with which Twilight Force are often compared) have the sense to employ good songwriters and not fucking overdo every fucking thing. The worst part about Heroes Of Mighty Magic, however, is that somehow - don’t ask me how because I have no fucking clue - half the album sounds like some kind of sappy Christmas music complete with a weird jingle bell sound. Sure, the thing about this kind of music is that it’s supposed to sound like a movie score, but I’m thinking more Lord of the Rings, less sweet, sugary Christmas movies you remember from your childhood.

The album not only sucks horribly, it also lasts for an eternity. When the title track starts playing and it’s ten minutes long, you’re like, “oh, so this’ll be the last track”. Nope motherfucker. We’ve got an epilogue too. You go, “all right, fair enough, a minute or two of epilogue, I guess that’s in line with power metal”. Guess again. This fucker is seven awful minutes of some half dead geezer rambling all the coolest words Twilight Force found in Dungeons & Dragons For Dummies, and he does it with emotion and feeling reminiscent of a limp fish stick. And after that is the last track, which is only a minute and a half, thank Jesus, Buddha, Donald Trump or whoever bestowed that small mercy upon us. Seventy minutes. Seventy fucking minutes of garbage, when the (barely) listenable parts stretch to fifteen, tops. This garbage is an insult to power metal, an insult to metal as a whole, and easily the worst album of 2016. Hell, it’ll probably be the worst album of 2017, and likely the entire decade. Meanwhile, their own heroes (Rhapsody) went on and released on the greatest of 2016. I really hope someone was fired.

Standout tracks: ... *sound of crickets* ...

The first Twilight Force album made an effect on me exactly because it was so overly dramatic and cartoonish, I even thought it’s basically a deliberate parody of all power metal clichés one can find. Despite all the prejudice I had had for the record it eventually grew on me so big that I realized that I was waiting for their sophomre undertaking.

This is a tremendously hypnotizing music. The guys molded the essence of grandiose, taller-than-sky orchestration with soaring, fast power metal to a unique unity which is just a pure pleasure to listen to. In fact it is so tempting that I force myself not to listen to it all of the time in order to avoid getting overdosed or get bored and thus preserve the magic of the re-listens. The band is now under the banner of Nuclear Blast hopefully providing a major step-up in getting them known and famous all over the metal world.

I preordered this CD after hearing the first two teaser songs published on youtube. This is the digipack edition with two discs and a massively sophisticated artwork and booklet design. The front cover is literally one of the most spellbinding painted art I have lately seen on a metal CD and is able to conjure fantastic tales right in front of your eyes with the company of the music. The rear portrays a castle reminiscent of Disney’s famous castle in its logo. The band members are drawn and each of them has their own page with a Dungeon and Dragons type of character description added. F.e. the – almost unpronounceably named De’Azsh – drummer’s vitality is stated as unlimited. Funny dudes!

The music is an ultramelodic meteor metal striking through the skies enriched with Christian Hedgren’s magical, high pitched voice (he goes under the name Chrileon). He has evidently gained skills and experience since the debut album, especially his vibrato technic improved a lot (that was basically absent from the previous record) and overall he sings in a much more mature way. Sure, vocal acrobatics are part of the picture too but in a controlled and clever way. There is one moment though, I feel an other worldly help might have raised Christian’s voice to the stars, and that is in the chorus of Powerwind. I hope I am not right but there is a flavour of autotune there.

Finally a power metal release which does not disappoint with any of its tunes. No I-am-tough-as-hell type of artificially dissonant and rough parts, no overwhelming 2 minutes solo sections, this is more like a very cheesy embodiment of an uplifting and blissful metal party. Bandleaders Blackwald and Lynd are obviously oozing with ideas so even the verse melodies are catchier than any random power metal band’s chorus in itself. All the songs are winners and basically the only complaint I can raise is that the 63 minutes of music is simply not enough! The best song in my view is Flight of the Sapphire Dragon with enchanting and stunning melodies, it pays homage to John Powell’s work on the animated movie How to train your Dragon (just check out songs Test Drive and Forbidden Friendship). The other superior tune is Rise of a Hero. This song is more Disney than the Disney musicals themselves. Anyone having kids should introduce Twilight Force to them instead of Disney movies, that’s the proper way to raise the next true metal generation. The last tune, Knights of Twilight's Might is supposed to be the anthem of Twilight Force, explained by Blackwald, expected to be heard presumably after concerts and also expected for the loyal fans to learn and sing along with the band at those instances.

We have two famous guest vocalists appearing here (among the other not so known guest musicians). Fabio is a legend, everyone in this genre recognizes his voice in an instant. However, aside from the fact that probably it was an extreme honor and pride for the guys to have such a renowned guest singing on their disc, in my opinion he didn’t really add anything extra. I risk to say, Christian’s voice has far more emotion and range to it. He sings the same melody later in the song and it’s just better, richer and more entertaining. Sorry Fabio. The appearance of Joakim from Sabaton is not much of a surprise as he took part already in Gates of Glory from the first album and also it’s openly known that the two bands’ members are good friends. In fact Joakim’s deeper, raspier voice counteracts Christian’s high pitched voice perfectly reinvigorating the atmosphere.

The booklet is densely filled with descriptions about the characters the band members portray, written in highly sophisticated English language, evidently inspired by some great writers of our (past) times so I do not entirely understand why then the lyrics are so blah... “Written” with Power Metal Lyrics Generator 5000, almost all rhymes are made through night, light, might, light, bright, twilight etc words. Also every song has the words sky, stars, clouds, valleys several times used. This is one drawback. There are countless resemblances to Tolkien’s works (song title There and back again, Chrileon as character pretty much resembling to Bilbo, and dwarves got a key to enter a mountain to wake a dragon... we all have heard and seen these before in popular culture). Additionally, song 11, Epilogue, is Blackwald talking (acting?) in his dramatic way and unveiling further infos about the Twilight Force members, however nothing extra which would not be present in the written descriptions in the booklet. Praiseworthy is however that reportedly the whole speech was recorded in one shot without the need to cut and edit. Still I would have been happier with a real song instead.

The sound was probably the first issue people pointed out when the youtube teasers were published (and some morons still get angry over it; just read the fucking explanation, geez... Now with the full recording at hand it is seen (and highlighted in the booklet too) that the aim was to reach optimal fidelity for all the instruments. This means that certain elements had to be toned down in order to hear the multimillion orchetral decorations. It must have been a tremendous work to find the proper volume for each track (this is the problem Wintersun faces, wanting maximum volume yet optimal fidelity too for every instrument, hence Time 2 is stuck). Since the mixing and mastering was done basically by the keyboardist Blackwald the symphonical elements take big part of the available range, while the guitars and drums (hihat, cymbals in general) had to take a secondary role. Not so appreaciated move when talking about power metal. Next time guys please put a bit more punch in those distortions.

The second disc in this package contains among others three orchestral only songs and man, they are un-fucking-believable. Surprise your granny with these pieces on your Christmas Eve dinner as background music and she will give her necessary blessing for you being a metalist. They are amazing. Period! This is the art which justifies glory to a composer, being a composer myself I raise my hat! There is a so called chip version of Powerwind here which is like what you would hear from an old arcade gaming machine... sorry dudes, it’s forgettable.

Twilight Force penned down probably the most important symphonic power metal album of the decade, for those with open mind comprehensive attitude the effects it generates are comparable only with Symphony of the Enchanted Lands album. By my measures they surpassed many long established groups in creativity (f.e. this is what Sonata Arctica should have done instead of Unia), and although having some backdraws on the sound and lyrics fronts, plus it’s not cheesy but a cheesecake already, still this album is going to be one of the most influential and entertaining symphonic records for many years to come.

The definition of a band 'maturing' can be exemplified in many ways. The nerdy Swedes of Twilight Force have gone for the immature method of maturing themselves: make everything bigger and louder. If you're familiar with their debut album, 2014's "Tales of Ancient Prophecies", you THINK you'd know exactly what to expect: dragons, magic, swords and wizards. Well you'd be wrong! Because here in 2016, what you get is MORE dragons, MORE magic, MORE swords and MORE wizards. Oh, and might. So much might. I honestly lost count of how many times you hear the word 'might' on the album. Basically, the band have gone from being Rhapsody clones, to being hilariously parodical clones of themselves. I barely even know where to start with this one...

Let's start from the exterior and work our way in: the packaging. It's a giant, purple dragon flying in front of a moonlit forest, spewing stars from its mouth whilst fairies dance around it. The songs have titles like "Battle of Arcane Might", "Flight of the Sapphire Dragon" and, best of all, "Knights of Twilight's Might". The rear artwork is a sunset backlighting a Disney-esque castle over which stretches a blue/purple rainbow. The first few pages of the CD booklet are taken up by backstory to each of the six main characters, a map of the Twilight Kingdom, and the character's stats (yes, their fucking STATS!). And the icing on the cake: the album is called "Heroes of Mighty Magic". This...is going to be fun.

I suppose I should get on to the actual music at some point - so here goes nothing...

Wow.

If I described the artwork as 'Disney-esque', I'll go one further and officially dub this band Disney metal. The symphonics used in the previous album were definitely integral, but took a back-row seat in comparison to "Heroes of Mighty Magic". The orchestrations, though synthetic, are of insanely high quality and eclipse almost everything else. At times, the symphonics swell to such enormous size that the mix actually struggles to keep it all in balance! Think Wintersun but with a sense of humour. I applaud the bands' over-use of the percussion section. There's rarely a moment where you can't hear bells/triangles/glockenspiels of some kind. In fact, to play these songs live may require a full-time wind chime player.

The lyrics are obviously supposed to follow the epic saga the band are so fond of. But their lack of grasp on the English language - beyond the words 'magic', 'stars', 'power' and 'might' - really holds back the potential that concept could have. But the music is so wonderfully overblown and pompous, you don't care! Let's just scream something about dragons and steel and be done with it!

The songs are incredibly well-written. They have more layers than a 60-foot trifle, but that just means it will require multiple listens to understand. They ensure that each chorus is an absolute highlight. When you've got a full-blown choir, orchestra and power metal band blasting the chorus to "Flight of the Sapphire Dragon", the result is irresistible. Colossal, frivolous and yet so meant to be. This time round, Twilight Force have achieved what all symphonic power metal bands should at some point: the 10-minute song. Two of them, no less! "There And Back Again" contains a glorious chorus worthy of anything Fabio Lione and co. achieved. Oh, what's that? Fabio Lione is a guest singer on this very song?! Well then. The title-track also provides us with a guest - none other than Joakim Broden from Sabaton!! This album is turning out more and more like a christmas present with each listen...

Despite the stylistic consistency, the variation lies in the song lengths. In contrast to the previously mentioned epics, "Riders of the Dawn" is a quick blast of glory with a chorus that can melt steel. "Epilogue" is a hilariously goofy spoken-word track by an actor who clearly loves his job! The fact that it lasts for over 6 minutes is testament to how much this band care not for your muggle ways. The closing track, "Knights of Twilight's Might" is the perfect way to close the album. A 2-minute tribute to the fans, in the style of a hymn.

I find it difficult to praise this album without simultaneously poking fun at it. Because that's exactly what it is: fun. Pure and simple. Through these utterly massive compositions, there flows the spirit of six fantasy-obsessed nerds. This album couldn't be more sincere, but also grandiose to the point of being silly. Approach this album with a sense of humour, leaving your brain at the door. "Heroes of Mighty Magic" received untold amounts of praise from the likes of Tony Kakko, Joakim Broden and Luca Turilli, so if you can't take my word for it, then you know who to look to! In all seriousness, this album is mind-blowing and will be a serious contender for 'Top 5 of 2016'. Let the knights of twilight's might reign like a magic rainbow! ...or some shit like that.

"I take a ride on my mighty steed.
A steed of finest breed.
Fighting the trolls with my mighty sword.
A sword of magic steel."

Perhaps the thing that made Twilight Force's impressive debut album, 2014's Tales of Ancient Prophecies, shine so bright was a factor most people wouldn't expect: its length, which is exactly 36 minutes. This turns out to be ideal as most of the songs on that offering blaze like meteors as they fly past you with their near constant speed-based neoclassical bombast and their intricate, full-throttle soloing. Too much more of that would have been exhausting. With their sophomore effort almost twice as long as their debut, the band was going to have to pull a few more tricks out of their bag to stay engaging the whole way through. Do they manage it?

Yes. While most of these songs still sound like exactly what a faster Rhapsody would make, the speed and over-the-top symphonic bits never wear you out, mainly because there are plenty of moments where the pace slows down, though the busy keys are always there to prevent the album from seeming sluggish. A stronger classical flavor permeates this album, with the background orchestration being more prevalent and organic than before, providing lush atmospherics as well as symphonic touches that seem to always add the right amount of grandeur to whatever piece they’re used in. ‘Guardian of the Seas’ starts with a vaguely folky, keyboard-driven motif that flows brilliantly into some overblown neoclassical fare and switches things up later with some sparse passages that bring loud-whispering choirs to the foreground. ‘Rise of a Hero’ also provides some unexpected twists, with some woman singing a verse in this oddly-appealing nursery rhyme lilt that provides a great contrast with the deep-voiced choir that follows her up, as well some jazzy stop-start playing before the final chorus. 'Riders of the Dawn' is arguably the album's standout, with the catchiest, most powerful chorus in recent memory, the galloping drums and fast-charging guitars that play along making it seem that much more potent.

While this album’s production, courtesy of Nuclear Blast, is more professional than these Swedish dorks had access to when they recorded their last full-length and contributes to the sense that Heroes is bigger than its predecessor, it robs the finished product of some of the naïve charm Tales had. Last time, the guitars and keys were always up front and center, sounding sharp but not enough to strangle everything else in the mix. This time, everything is a little too even, except the bass, which, as per the genre’s norm, rarely has much of a presence. The choirs aren’t any more powerful than Chrileon, the main singer (whose performance is still high-pitched and sugary but more disciplined), and the instruments, replete with what sounds like multiple layers of keyboards, sometimes melt together into an indistinct slurry but for the most part, the mix is balanced and has the right amount of gloss.

This release marks the band's first use of a prominent symphonic metal trope: the 10-minute song. Perhaps making up for the lack of such a piece on their first album, this one contains two. The results differ. The first of these, 'There and Back Again', located in the middle of the album, feels surprisingly insubstantial, with all the different segments seeming like they're only here to connect the overlong, poppy choruses except for the last three minutes, where the band wanders around until the final chorus. Its solo is probably the best on the record, though. The title track, which rounds out the album proper, is the song 'There and Back Again' wishes it could be. This number never reaches a pace you’d call breakneck but the way this majestic track progresses, with each section seeming to outdo the previous one with overblown choirs and by far the best orchestrated classical embellishments on the album, keeps the song, even in its quieter moments, from ever being less than thrilling.

'Heroes of Mighty Magic' is functionally the last song on the album. There are two tracks that come after it but calling them songs wouldn't be fair to 'Riders of the Dawn' or 'Battle of Arcane Might'. First up is 'Epilogue', which is just five minutes of some guy explaining the fantasy story allegedly told through the lyrics. This technically isn't filler because the band clearly thinks it's important, but there's nobody who wants to listen to 5 straight minutes of goofy narration. Skip this crap unless you're the kind of weirdo who actually cares about the story. You can also safely skip 'Knights of Twilight's Might', which is just a few quick symphonic motifs, seemingly part of a song the band either never finished or cut from the album. It serves no purpose and isn't compelling enough to warrant even the occasional listen.

If Tales was a quick jog in a magical kingdom, Heroes is an all-day hike through its verdant meadows and elf-infested forests. Not quite as energetic or simplistic as these Turilli acolytes’ debut, this album does feel better developed. The album takes its time to unfold and progress while managing to keep up the pace. Turning in some more dense and complex music, Twilight Force’s latest is a promising step forward.