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Another band gets too big for their britches. Something happened to Twilightning after their debut, and while I'm not exactly sure what, I can definitely say it was not a good thing. Perhaps it was the taste of fame they got from boasting such a commercial, easy to enjoy style, which inevitably lead to the fact that they now just don't care about making good music anymore. I gave Twilightning a lot of leeway before, as despite their obvious commerciality and Sonata Arctica-isms, they had a lot of talent and made some good music for a while. The cat is out of the fucking bag now, though, as without their mesmerizingly cool power metal semblances to save them, Twilightning are naked and exposed; exposed for the greedy attention whores they are. They might talk big and act like they're "original" or "ballsy" or whatever else they throw around in interviews, but in reality, this is a band that has gotten progressively worse and worse over time, a band that pussified their sound to the utmost extreme possible. They might claim that they "don't care about trends," and "do what they want," but that's nonsense. The only thing they don't care about these days is their fanbase, whom they have promptly taken a gigantic shit upon with this one. This is a worthless, fecal radio-rock album and nothing more, and that money on the album cover pretty much sums up the attitude of the band nowadays, whether they intended such a thing or not. We can't ignore it any longer, folks - if any of you ever liked Twilightning before, there's no point in bothering with them anymore. This was bound to happen sooner or later. We've reached critical mass, and my Bullshit-o'meter is giving me a flaming red warning signal - this is just about the worst "power metal" album I've ever heard in my life.

Folks, this isn't even a metal album - no, instead, it's very much a commercial 80s glam rock record, sounding as if it was parachuted right through time and landed in the new millennium, by some horrible freak accident. The only difference is that this lacks the catchiness and general "fun" sort of feel you'd get from RATT and Quiet Riot. Seriously, these songs will go in one ear and out the other, never even staying to try and stick with you at all. It's like making a car but not including an engine; it just doesn't work like that. I can't really call this specific album a sell out, though, as Twilightning have always been really poppy and melodic. But the difference was that they once made music worth listening to, whereas now they don't have any sort of musical talent to hide behind. Hell, they don't even have a keyboardist anymore to add that certain "magical" air the debut had. This is just a mess of boring hard rock riffs and pointless solos and melodies from a pair of guitarists who used to create exuberant and vibrant melodies, and tepid, annoying vocal lines belted out by the shallow, lifeless husk of a voice of Heikki Pohyia, who was once a metal singer, and is now merely a cockgobbling radio crooner with little to no worth at all.

Where there was once a shimmering and beautiful ballad titled "Under Somber Skies," there is now only a shallow, worthless radio rock abomination called "Not a Word," which is easily the worst thing Finland's metal scene has and will ever produce, complete with stupid acoustic guitar twanging and some ghastly, awful nasal crooning. Seriously, it doesn't get worse than this. It really doesn't. Where there were speedy, energetic power metal crackers like "Gone to the Wall" or "Delirium Veil," there are now bouncy, poppy, idiotic, midpaced tunes with choruses that never fail to annoy and riffs that will never make your head bang. Opener "Isolation Shell" does have a catchy chorus, but it's catchy in a really obnoxious way, and you can just smell the hair gel and makeup radiating from your speakers as Pohyia commits his aural sodomy over those inane, rehashed-from-the-80s riffs. The songwriting is inane and pedestrian, positively faceless in every single aspect, and really, really simple and radio friendly on every front. The other songs follow suit, and the difference between this and Delirium Veil are just night and day.

The music here is, in all reality, worth maybe a 15% or 20%, but I can't bring myself to give this any points at all. In addition to the fact that they are slimy, greasy, money grubbing whores (which is enough to make me lose respect for the band's previous albums as well), this album is an exercise in simultaneously pissing on the graves of 80s glam rock and modern power metal, being such a bloated, over-saturated joke on the rock genre as a whole. This album is not only the worst of European power metal, but it's also a really bad glam rock record, even for glam standards. There's none of the melodic sensibility of a Stratovarius or a Gamma Ray, and none of the catchy vigor that made bands like Motley Crue or Whitesnake so much fun to listen to. Bands have been blending power metal with 80s rock for a while now, but never has a band done so this poorly, and never this blatantly and offensively either.

At this point, you're probably starting to wonder if aliens abducted the band known as Twilightning and replaced them with this absurdly bad group of drugged up, out-of-work 80s butt rocking has-beens, but come on, people - open your eyes! This is very much Twilightning, the Twilightning that always existed under the gloss and polish, the man behind the curtain, the face behind the makeup. When you take that away, this is what you're left with. So what exactly does this leave us with, folks? Nothing. Nothing at all but a bad album from a band that has stopped caring about making good music and about most of their fanbase. Twilightning can keep making their shitty throwback glam rock, but they can just go ahead and count me out. I'm done. There's no reason for me, or anyone for that matter, to pay any attention to this worthless band at all now. What a fucking colossal waste.