Although this band has been around for some 25 years, and having so far released six studio albums, I’d never heard of them. And after listening to this new album, my opinion is still unclear. Have I missed something by not having heard of them before or not.
At first I thought they had listened very well to the Americans of Queensrÿche, but there are other influences in their music as well. There are elements of Melodic Doom, but also some Christian Dark Metal, so it’s quite an unusual combination. What must be said is that they have a great vocalist. Were it not that the aforementioned Queensrÿche have already found a replacement for Geoff Tate, this guy could easily do it as well. As I said before, I don’t really know what to make of this album. There are some fantastic songs on it, like the opener ‘In Memoriam’, at more than eleven minutest the longest song on this album, or ‘Where The Story Ends’, but also much weaker songs like ‘The Hour Of Darkness’, but in total there are more good songs than bad ones.
In the end I did make a decision: this is a good album.