Ehhh... I don't know. This is a half decent traditional/progressive metal disc from these Swedes, but I do think the recording holds it back a touch, and no way in hell does this thing need to run 68 minutes with 14 tracks! Sorry, I know my attention span isn't the greatest, but unless your band writes 10-minute songs, you don't need to put out a record that's over an hour long... 14 different songs is way too much of this style to take. The actual songwriting here ranges from the typical power metal style to some old school sounding Iron Maiden/Judas Priest riffs and what not, so expect lots of cool vocal harmonies and soaring choruses, solos, keyboard textures, etc. What I don't like is that the production has a really unnatural bite to it, and that hurts. Especially the drums and the guitars. The drums are crisp and tight, which is fine, but the bass sort of falls right behind the thin dryness of the guitars, so there's not a great deal of low-end to the rhythm section at all. The guitars also lack that bassy punch, so even though the tone is on the right track, it's not warm or natural enough to really do much for the tracks. I like the singing a lot, it's straightforward for this stuff, but the guy's a good vocalist and writes some good lines. I just think the sound needs more overall cohesion and feeling. Though, I have to say that their clean guitar tone is fucking beautiful! My problem with the writing is the same problem that I have with a lot of this stuff: The songs often tend to be too long and too moderately paced with a lean towards being sort of slow. I like my power metal fairly fast and energetic with lots of catchiness. Fuck it, if I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go all out, you know? Give me the fistbanging mania and I'll run with it. These songs have some killer choruses, but everything sort of drags along. If they sped up some of the riffs it would add a sense of energy as well as making the songs slightly shorter, which could be awesome. I'm not into the layout here. I don't know, the back cover actually looks cool, but the front cover artwork is sort of cheesy in some ways, the band logo is terrible, and the band photos that appear elsewhere are just awful! I really don't know why people feel the need to put stupid looking posed band photos in their CD booklets, but whatever. No lyrics are included, so I'm in the dark there. There's supposed to be a CD-Rom video for "Lost Within a Shade" on here, but it's not included on this copy for whatever reason. This just isn't up to par for me. It has some cool moments, but I'm bored in the end.
[Karmageddon]
Running time - 68:50, Tracks: 14
[Notable tracks: none of them really hit me as a whole]
Karmageddon Media - http://www.karmageddonmedia.com
