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No strangers to tackling challenging topics, Germany's Rebellion has gone back to William Shakespeare for their lyrical inspiration on album #8, A Tragedy in Steel Part II: Shakespeare's King Lear. If you've heard Rebellion's brand of crunchy heavy/power metal with gravelly vocals before, this new album won't be a surprise as it is very similar to their prior output. There are a lot of extra voices littering the songs as Rebellion fleshes out Lear's sad tale of scheming daughters Goneril (how'd you like to grow up with that name?) and Regan and their equally awful husbands, loving daughter Cordelia and the king himself (vocalist Michael Seifert) as he descends into madness. Their acting is stilted and over the top and bogs down songs that are already unremarkable apart from a few good riffs, so what you end up with is a lumbering, ponderous play turned in to a lumbering, ponderous album. If you like Shakespeare and metal, this is going to give you paroxysms of joy. For me, it was a chore.