ASHEN REIGN is the brainchild of Atlanta’s Brent McDaniel, a dude who obviously loves ‘80s guitar rock shred and melodic rock. On this, his second CD, McDaniel still struggles with indie issues—the production falls short and the vocals don’t sound too confident—but still manages to craft songs that offer a tip of the hat to Euro power metal (especially with the keys) and classic American power metal. Throw in some classic rock guitar work—really, the highlight here is the guitar work—and this is definitely one that dudes (and it’s gonna be dudes) who enjoy the ideologies of labels like Frontiers will be interested in checking out. Again, it comes down to the guitar playing, as the intro solo (yup) in the title track, the main riff of ‘Hope’, and the entirety of the cool QUEENSRŸCHE-tinged ‘Broken Heart’ all prove, classy and dominating. Apart from qualms about the drums (they’re either bad-sounding electronic drums or really poorly produced real drums), a couple major stumbling points for Ashen Reign’s future could well be that clunky band name (hard to remember, kinda hard to say, very hard to drunkenly suggest to a bud) and the fact that this is a solo show, which is hard to market, somehow hard to take fully seriously, and hard for potential labels to wrap their heads around. If McDaniel could assemble a crew of skilled musicians—including a more flamboyant vocalist so he can focus on guitar playing and songwriting—to carry his vision forth, his already promising future would have even more potential.
