• Korsair - Mechopolis (2014)

    Korsair is a Swedish progressive metal project around mastermind Anders Thonander who's playing bass and keyboards on the debut full length effort and who takes care of the programming and the ambitious lyrics that tell the story of two twins, two friends, two cyborgs and a robot who come together during strange circumstances. Anders Thonander gathered twelve guest musicians from countries such as Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden, Turkey and the United States of America around him to give birth to "Mechopolis". This album features sixteen songs and is only digitally available so far as the record has a stunning running time of more than two hours, including six tracks breaking the ten minute mark. Obviously, such an album requests a lot of attention, intellect and patience to unfold but fans of Ayreon should definitely try this record out.

    Apart of the cinematic atmosphere and the gripping lyrics to a fascinating story, the most outstanding element of this challenging release is the use of keyboards and programming. One gets to hear warm and slightly psychedelic organ sounds in the key of old progressive rock bands like Deep Purple, more technically stunning passages that could come from Dream Theater but also a few contemporary electronic sounds that remind me of Transcend for example. All the different instruments have soloing passages and different tunes where they can shine but the keyboards and programming hold the entire record together and give this release a space opera atmosphere. Especially the calm instrumental passages in the epic songs or the shorter tracks featuring narrative vocal samples work extremely well on this cinematic release.

    On the other side, the other instruments fail to stand out despite several soloing parts. The bass guitar is not as dominant as it could be, the drumming varies from promising dynamical patterns in some songs to disappointingly dull and repetitive beats in others but it's especially the guitar play that is a letdown. The harder riffs sound ordinary, the greatest melodies are carried by the keyboards and the overlong solos lack compelling emotions. The numerous guest vocalists deliver a solid routine job as they all sound well and have talent but none of them delivers a remarkable effort that would inspire you to check out the singers' other projects.

    It's difficult to point out any best tracks on such a long record. "Dark Green Skies" is probably the catchiest tune as it comes around with calm, enchanting and grounded androgynous vocals underlayed by mysterious yet peaceful guitar and keyboard melodies in five and a half compact minutes. The quasi-instrumental "The Turn" comes around with a constantly growing apocalyptical and psychedelic atmosphere supported by several elements as the sound gets progressively louder, faster and more epic while hectical narrative vocal samples set in. This cinematic track is probably the most dramatic song on the release and manages to grab the listener for a short rollercoaster ride of four and a half minutes.

    I must admit that the story behind the release has a lot of potential. It would have made a great graphic novel, novel or movie for sure. Anders Thonander could have also created an excellent instrumental record or atmospheric score for a science-fiction blockbuster with a few shorter and more concise tracks and without the guest singers. On the other side, a great conceptual idea is not enough to carry an album far over two hours. As the final result turns out to be, "Mechopolis" has a lack of emotional outbursts, several noticeable lengths and some dull instrumental passages lacking diversity and originality. This is the perfect example where less would have been so much more. In the end, "Mechopolis" is only interesting for very patient progressive rock and metal fans who don't mind overlong conceptual records with a calmer tone in the key of the last Ayreon release and the likes.

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  • Twisted Sister - A Twisted Christmas (2006)

    The idea of reinventing traditional Christmas carols is nothing new but only very few bands have managed to create something truly creative, moving and unique with this kind of music. The only Christmas record I listen to each year and that never stops impressing me is "Wir warten auf's Christkind" by German punk band Die toten Hosen under the Die roten Rosen moniker that mixes energizing punk rock with amusing lyrics, a few own Christmas related songs with thoughtful lyrics and refreshed traditional Christmas carols sung in German and English. I got interested by Twisted Sister's project thanks to the track "Heavy Metal Christmas" included on this record. It's a reinterpretation of the traditional "Twelve Days of Christmas" carol with self-ironic lyrics related to glam rock and heavy metal stereotypes sung by all band members in a joyous way. In addition to this, the traditionally repetitive song is filled with nice guitar licks, bass guitar solos and dynamical drum fills to keep things interesting over more than five minutes. This track is entertaining, funny and passionate, easily the best on the entire record and made me check out the entire release.

    What Twisted Sister offers is a balanced mixture of Christmas carols with their traditional melodies and lyrics on one side and the typical Twisted Sister sound on the thin line between glam rock and heavy metal including some humorous lyrics and a couple of addicting hard rock riffs, short guitar solos, a tight rhythm section and melodic grounded vocals. Twisted Sister's version of "Oh Come All Ye Faithful" is very representative of the record as it is a mixture of the traditional Christmas carol and Twisted Sister's own classic "We're Not Gonna Take It" with a slight Slade touch.

    After a while this usual mixture gets a little bit predictable and redundant over the course of the record. To shake things up a little bit, Twisted Sister had a good idea and invited two guest singers to perform on this album. German metal legend Doro Pesch contributes female backing vocals on "White Christmas". That's at least what press texts and encyclopedias say because her vocals must be somewhere between inaudible and non-existent. Twisted Sister missed a great occasion to add a certain something to an otherwise solid but not impressive reinterpretation of this song. The second female vocalist is much more audible as Lita Ford joins forces with Twisted Sister on "I'll Be Home for Christmas" which sounds like a glam rock ballad that could come straight from a discotheque in the early eighties. In my opinion, her vocal efforts are solid but lacking true passion for the project. Still, this is one of the better songs on the album. Otherwise, a couple of songs include background vocals by the band members as well as a few choirs here and there that add a slightly epic feeling to tracks like "Silver Bells". 

    In all honesty, "A Twisted Christmas" is a pretty average record that quickly loses ist Initial charm but which may be a welcome change to children choirs in churches, Coca Cola commercials and the usual songs by Band Aid, Mariah Carey or Wham! that keep annoying people annually in shopping malls, on the radio and on television from just after Halloween until January. From this point of view, listening to Twisted Sister's at times humorous and entertaining reinterpretation of Christmas carols may feel like a relief for many rock and metal fans during that time of the year. Still, the record could have been much better with a couple of new and own Twisted Sister songs, a few better guest musicians and vocalists and a meaner and thicker production. In the end, this is the kind of music you may listen to once or twice a year in December and deservedly forget for the rest of the year. Anyway, I wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy new year.

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  • Ensiferum - Suomi Warmetal (2014)

    "Suomi Warmetal" is a nice gimmick included in the ninety-fourth edition of the German "Legacy" magazine which is in my humble opinion the very best metal magazine that always delivers value for money each two months by including multiple posters, at least two and in this case even four CDs, and far over two hundred pages covering almost all genres and underground bands as much as the most famous names for a fair price. This exclusive Ensiferum EP includes four cover songs recorded as limited bonus tracks over the past few years with slightly different line-ups.

    "Warmetal" is a brand new cover song which will be included on the limited edition of the upcoming "One Man Army" full length studio release in February 2015. It's a cover of the rather unknown Finnish black and doom metal band Barathrum, taken from their "Infernal" record from 1997 but the original version of this song had already been recorded as early as 1993. The cover of the occult extreme metal song is simplistic but convinces with atmospheric bleak keyboard sounds and fast extreme metal instrumental parts. Apart of a short break including sound samples from a tavern, this song has nothing to do with Ensiferum's usual folk metal. This cover could also come from any ordinary Scandinavian melodic death metal band and is therefor not really impressive. At least it sounds better than the dumb and stereotypical original.

    The cover of Iron Maiden's "Wratchchild" also suffers from the fact that Ensiferum don't include any epic folk melodies and limit themselves to a generic melodic death metal sound. In addition to this, the world really doesn't need any Iron Maiden cover anymore and only very few bands such as Driving Mrs. Satan are still able to add their own creative spirit to heavy metal classics. Needless to add that it's nearly impossible to reach the high quality of the best heavy metal band in the world.

    Uriah Heep's "Lady in Black" is easily the best cover on this short release. It features laid back acoustic guitar melodies, appeasing clean vocals, warm choirs and soft keyboard layers before the songs evolves with stomping mid-tempo guitar riffs and a few faster drum parts. It's a song that truly sounds like Ensiferum and that could easily fit as a folk ballad on a regular version of their albums. There is only one little problem: Uriah Heep's mysterious, rhythmic and warm original version is much better than this cover effort. 

    The last track is a cover of Judas Priest's "Breaking the Law", an overrated song from an overrated record that has been covered too many times which is a sad thing as the British heavy metal legend has released a streak of impressive pioneer records in the late seventies that get rarely covered. Ensiferum's version of the hit is one of the better reinterpretations. The bass guitar play is dominating, the back choirs and keyboards are epic and the short break where we hear a horse even adds a funny touch to this folk metal version. In contrast to the first two songs on this EP, Ensiferum manages again to make this version sound like their own.

    In the end, we get to hear two good cover songs where Ensiferum succeed in adding their own epic folk metal touch to the iconic originals and two weaker reinterpretations where Ensiferum sound like any other exchangeable melodic extreme metal band from Scandinavia. This release is a nice gimmick for collectors and a respectable supplement to an outstanding metal magazine but otherwise, this record is everything but essential or exciting.

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  • Dornenreich - Freiheit (2014)

    I've liked to listen to selected Dornenreich songs in the past since I discovered them on the outstanding neofolk compilation "Whom the Moon a Nightsong Sings" including bands such as Empyrium, Les Discrets and Ulver. As "Freiheit" is supposed to be the last album before a longer break from the Austrian neofolk trio and as I thought the song titles sounded epic, philosophical and poetic, I decided to give an entire Dornenreich record a fair chance. 

    As it turns out, I'm rather disappointed with the outcome of this release. All eight songs basically sound the same. Inoffensive acoustic guitars meet melancholic violin melodies and whispered vocals over some nature Sound samples. This kind of laid back atmosphere might work for one or two tracks but not for eight songs with a running time of more than forty-seven minutes. Most of the tracks sound too alike, pretentious and unspectacular to leave any deeper Impression and there are definitely no significant flamenco rhythms or world music elements as the press text claims. The lyrics desperately try to be intellectual and that's exactly why they aren't and turn out to be pretentious, predictable and passive.

    Only two songs manage to stand out a tiny little bit. "Im ersten aller Spiele" has an unusual song structure and is quite hard to digest as an opener. Even though this unpredictable attempt at progressive song writing goes nowhere, it breaks with the more relaxed writing by numbers of the other songs. The other remarkable song happens to be "Das Licht vertraut der Nacht" because it's the only song on here which includes electric bass and guitars as well as harsher vocals that go back to the band's atmospheric black metal roots. Sadly, this emotional outburst is rather short and not impressively played either. If the band had used the contrast of truly diversified world music elements and passionate extreme metal passages more, this album would have been much more interesting.

    As it turns out to be, "Freiheit" sounds tame, repetitive and dull and repeats the same calm melodies, lyrical topics and down-stripped song writing ideas over and over again. This is not at all what I associate with an epic term like freedom but rather with intellectual boredom. In my opinion, neofolk is more than acoustic guitars and violins plus poetic German lyrics over some samples of nature sounds but that's the only Thing Dornenreich offers on this hollow release. I would rather describe this effort as an acoustic songwriter output that might please to some lonesome self-consumed poets but not to truly open-minded fans of passionate world music or atmospheric extreme metal.

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  • Therion - A'arab Zaraq - Lucid Dreaming (1997)

    In its long career, Therion has released two limited compilation efforts that are nonetheless considered by the band to be regular full lengths releases. The first of these has the weird title A’arab Zaraq – Lucid Dreaming. It was released as a ten year anniversary album, and is really for faithful fans and collectors only. Occasional listeners really don’t need this offering that is by all usual measures of the band, very sub-average.

    The most interesting songs on this output are the first two, which are entirely new songs left over from the Theli sessions. Both songs are atmospheric gothic doom metal tracks but don’t have the symphonic majesty and the creative classical influences of the songs on the previous output. These tracks are still diverse and enjoyable enough to listen to, but don’t impress me as much as any other songs from Theli. The next couple of songs are cover tracks and re-recordings of Therion’s past efforts. The progressive take on the Scorpions’ “Fly To The Rainbow” is definitely the highlight amongst these, and one of Therion’s best cover tracks ever.

    All other songs here are connected with a soundtrack to an obscure movie entitled “The Golden Embrace” that was directed by Per Albinsson. These tracks are mostly instrumental and have much more to do with pure symphonic and classical music with an occult atmosphere than with metal. These songs inspire images in my mind and develop a certain kind of dark but elegant atmosphere. It’s really the kind of thing to listen to in your bed at night with your headphones on. After a while, the tracks become more than a bit repetitive, and the orchestrations by the Barmbek Symphonic Orchestra sound artificial and limited, as if they were cheap keyboard sounds rather than actual orchestral passages. Maybe this negative effect is also due to a limited budget at that time, as the compositional efforts themselves are not bad per se.

    In the end, this compilation offers only a handful of interesting songs. Later on, Therion combined the best material of this release with the greatest songs from the other compilation entitled Crowning Of Atlantis, which was to be released in 1999. This combination, called Atlantis Lucid Dreaming and released in 2005, is worth a purchase if seen for a reasonable price. Otherwise, this record was only an appetizer for the growing fan base between the brilliant records of Theli and Vovin. This release is for die-hard fans only.

    Originally written for Black Wind Metal

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