Heroes of Vallentor
The Warriors Path Part I

Power metal, that is what the band name just screams to me immediately when I see it. It is heroes in shining armour, wielding their swords for honour, glory and victory. The path taken can lead to heroic deaths and deeds, there is also a conceptual part of this album with spoken word parts and all of that. I would say that the surprises just come thick and fast on this album, I mean knights, a spoken words intro, the first song opens with a falsetto scream, a singer sounding like a hybrid between the singers in Wizard and Manowar whatever their names are. And it goes on, the cover art, the spoken word ending, who would have thought it? This Swedish quartet sure knows how to reinvent a genre, or do they?

Look at the cover, imagine an album based on that… this is how this album sounds. It is a bit more raw and hard edge than most in the genre, their production sounds a bit cheap and old fashioned. I would say that the drummer must have gone through the same school of drumming as all the drummers in the power metal world and they seem to be going through the same checklist as those same bands. The album is quite long with 54 minutes of playing time, with a similar variation to any power metal album you might come to think of, or maybe something by Manowar - not that surprising I would say.

This is one of those albums that makes you think, but not in the way you might think. I wonder why creative people who write music and other things cannot think for their own and must use paint-by-numbers stuff to ”create” their works which in this case is an album with as much novelty as a bucket of water. In many instances I try to figure out what is more annoying, listening to this album or to my cat nagging about something I cannot figure out. It is too predictable and it is just too easy to tire of it and let your attention drift in other directions, kind of like when I am writing this review where I need to force myself to keep attention towards this album which does nothing whatsoever for me.

I have no favourite track on this album but I have to admit that it is not that awful, it may not be exciting but it is relatively well made even though they have much to improve to become more relevant in a musical genre that is becoming more and more crowded with bands and albums that feel so irrelevant that you just want to flush them down the toilet. I suppose that if you are a fan of the genre you should at least listen to it before flushing it down the toilet because you might like it, especially if you like the german bands that makes a little rawer and heavier power metal.

HHHHHHH