Architects of Chaoz
The League of Shadows

Dyslectic architects of chaos are releasing their debut album that has been given the name The League of Shadows. Behind these architects stand a man known from the iron maiden’s early adventures, Paul Di’Anno to be precise. To me a man who shouldn’t have been replaced by Dickinson as the two albums released with Di’Anno has a lot more excitement and life than the repetitive stuff that came after it. Though Di’Anno hasn’t really mustered anything of worth since leaving Iron Maiden either, so what about this one then? One should never judge a band/artist from what they have done before and the album cover doesn’t look that interesting, so are they any better at producing music than selecting artwork for their album?

Well, it is heavy metal, kind of reminds of the NWOBHM style of heavy metal with a slight touch of the modern added. Old style music with fresh production, good energy and it is that rockishly rough around the edges, one could describe as an edgy sound. Thing is though that Paul Di’Anno hasn’t sounded particularly good since leaving Iron Maiden, and this album is not really an exception but at least his vocals fit this album quite well. Stylewise it lacks novelty and the album is also rather long and is nearing an hour in playing time over a dozen tracks – at least if you are listening to the CD. That can be a little bit of a problem, the playing time that is.

Really well produced and all of that, modern and all of that – the album is good to listen to and the songs are fairly likeable. At first listen one wants to bring out the high ratings but after a few listens one realises that it doesn’t really offer us anything we haven’t already heard, and the lack of novelty becomes a bit disturbing as does the lack of variation and the long playing time. So, I think that in general it is for those that are already sold on the heavy metal genre and wants it to remain unchanged forever and ever. As a critic I have to say that it does not quite fulfil the criteria for the higher ratings.

A dozen tracks on the album, all of them are quite good but none of them is a real standout track in my opinion. The most memorable is the ending cover of Soldier of Fortune. I also think opener Rejected and Architects of Chaoz are two tracks that are fairly good and relatively memorable, but as I stated before none of them really stand out that much. Fans of the genre and what Di’Anno has done before will probably enjoy this album – for a critic it doesn’t really offer anything that makes it worth any rating higher than our middle one.

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