• A Hero For The World - A Hero For The World (2013)

    Ah, the Philippines – charming women, dream islands, ethnic diversity, exotic foods and drinks, sunshine and… Power Metal? Yes, you’ve read right. A Hero For The World is a young independent power metal band founded in 2012 that just released its first self-entitled debut record. It features ten tracks including a closing epic trilogy and thirteen bonus tracks in form of acoustic and alternative version of the first ten songs. Once you listen to the songs, you might rather think of a European power metal band and in fact you are right. Here comes the solution: the three band members have emigrated to the Philippines from Sweden and the United States of America.

    I think it’s a quite clever and honorable project to release a power metal record in such a remote place and spread the world wide metal infusion. These three guys owe all my respect. But I’m sorry to tell the world that this record itself is really disappointing.

    Let me explain. Imagine a mix of the sweetest and cheesiest releases of Freedom Call and Stratovarius, a few failed attempts at an epic atmosphere in the key of contemporary Manowar, an exchangeable and technically not all too skilled singer somewhere between a fake version of Eedguy's Tobias Sammet and Jorn, highly annoying multiple vocal lines and effects in all songs, choruses or overlong sound patterns that are repeated to death, childish melodies by guitars and keyboards that could come straight from a Disney soundtrack and an unimpressive rhythm section. This sounds bad? Well, that’s exactly what you get here. The repetition of song passages and the sweet instrumental diabetes even harm the songs that have a few interesting passages such as “Heaven’s Eyes” or “One Hope Of Light”. If these songs had a length of four and six minutes instead of seven and ten they would be quite decent but I guess the band simply wanted to create something too epic against its own good. The song writing is really filled with the worst stereotypes of the genre. This kind of music makes me realize why I’ve shifted away from the European power metal genre over the years because it has become too childish, dull and repetitive.

    The only song I’m able to like a little bit is the ballad “Free Forever”. Okay, it sounds like a Celtic Christmas song stolen from the “Lord of the Rings” soundtrack but it has its charm. The best thing about the song are the more grounded vocals that the singer manages not to mess up and the amazing female guest vocals by Louiebeth Aratan who is the only actual link to the Philippines on this record. This song stands out because of its dreamy and soft emotions. This track has not much to do with metal music and is really cheesy but that’s maybe why it stands out among the ordinary rest.

    In the end, I really wanted to like this ambitious project from such a beautiful and remote place. But the music doesn’t lie and I might only suggest this record to faithful fans of very melodic traditional European power metal. Anybody else will get his ears bleeding quite soon. This is the kind of record I would classify as a completely missed experiment even though I’m sorry to say that.

    Originally written for The Metal Observer

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