Screaming Shadows
Legacy of Stone

Shadows are screaming all the way from Italy, a band with a history stretching back over twenty years. The debut album arrived in 2003 and since then it has been three more, the latest 2011. Now in the dying days of 2021 a fifth album was released, and it certainly looked both dramatic and metallic. The press material compared with Iron Maiden and Avantasia, epic stuff is what I read, but not what I hear, more Iron Maiden than Avantasia if I am to compare bands.

Heavy metal of a classic variety, like something that has been dug up from the past. Considering the name of the label I first thought it was one of those old forgotten albums they had dug up and released, but it was recorded recently so it is a new album that sounds quite dated. And it is not just the sound, the vocalist is a bit of an archetype, as are the riffs and everything – the originality is somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea rather than on this record.

We have heard this multiple times before, there isn’t anything about Legacy of Stone that is fresh or exciting. It is a predictable, and a bit dull, album that might appeal to those into traditional heavy metal but very few others. It is kind of hard to see the point of an album like this, it doesn’t offer anything relevant or fresh, just another one of those nostalgic and cringeworthy efforts that makes one question why they even make music. Is it just to fall in line and make up the numbers, is it the ambitions that are missing or the talent? They are good at their craft so it might be the former.

One of those band that would be better off as a cover band, we don’t need another band without ideas and ambitions, who just copies what everyone else have done. Take the ending song as an example, I think you know what song it “draws inspiration” from. There are better choices in the heavy metal genre, lots of them. In the end it becomes bothersome to listen to screaming shadows.

HHHHHHH