Stormage
Dead of Night

Perhaps they were formed in a stormier age, perhaps they just ran out of imagination when it came to the band name, or maybe they were just fat Swedes for a little while. This German band releases their third album, ten years after the second one, a band that was born as Anthem many years ago. They released an album at that time and in 2003 with the arrival of current vocalist and a new guitarist they changed their name to Stormage. The thing is though that their music is about as interesting as their name or their cover art – I think their music is rather devoid of imagination and fresh thinking.

Power/heavy metal is how you can describe it, typical power chords and classically repetitive choruses – just like you would imagine from looking at the logo and artwork. A pretty long album and not overly varied either, and the production sounds more or less as one could imagine. There are no surprises on this album, it sounds like it looks and it looks like something we have heard before, many times. I would actually make the remark that this album is a mediocre one, the vocalist is okay but mediocre and the same can be said about the music – these guys have nothing that makes them stand apart from the majority of the heavy/power metal world and that can be a problem if they want to be noticed and sell many albums, or if they want to be held in high regard.

This German “heavy/power metal institution” does not impress, it is a rather average albums from any measurable standpoint. I find myself rather unaffected by what I hear, there are no songs that make any impression and the album as a whole starts and a long while later it ends and is immediately forgotten in favour of the next album I play. The third album by these Germans is simply just one of these albums, one of the albums by a band that can be considered an also-ran. For a band to really break through and get noticed it has to do more than just participate and make an album that is completely average, or completely mediocre.

So, nothing that stands out, average music – neither brilliant nor vomit inducing, it just is. Stormage and their Dead of Night might appeal to fans of the genre but somehow I doubt it as those fans probably already have hundreds of albums that are better than this one. I would actually think that the most remarkable thing about this album is the remarkable mediocrity it displays.

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