HARDWARES

Not sure why UK bands struggle with power metal. You’d think it would be a natural, given ancient history and the more recent NWOBHM, yet here’s another saccharine keyboard-popped act turning in cliché after cliché, from the cover art through the band and record title, into every pore of the music. The production is appropriately prissy, with staccato guitars massaged in as rhythm support to those clean, clear vocals and attendant Sonata/Bodom keyboard tones. It’s over hill and dale with a spring in your step, off to the medieval fair, for a joust and a swing ‘round the maypole. Zero desire to live in the real world here, and zero desire to carve out any fresh spot in the dungeon and dragons realm in which the band is caged, frilly sleeves fraying. Yeah, granted, I can only tolerate pi percent of the power metal pie, but even earnest fans of the genre would have a hard time finding interesting elements to this, save for a thorough demonstration of synth settings.