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Same old shit. I really could stop the review right there and you'd know everything about this album you'll ever need to, but so many people get pissy when I'm flippant, especially about cherished bands. In case you were in a cave, this is the first album Rhapsody have put out under their new moniker Rhapsody Of Fire, which takes a moderately gay band name and renders it unbearable. So this is actually the bands' sixth studio album in among the dysentery slurry of EPs and singles this band has been using for a decade to suck money out of their rabid fan base.

Either you like Rhapsody "Of Fire", or you don't. Some people absolutely worship this band, and my declarations of extreme mediocrity will do nothing to dampen such fanboying now or ever. But need I point out that if you have heard any Rhapsody album at any point, then you have heard them all. With some bands, that is a good thing, but the fatuous self-satisfaction that reeks from this band (and especially from their chief instigator Luca Turilli) makes certain that Rhapsody "Of Fire" come across as pretentious and tiresome rather than reliable. At least we can be thankful that Triumph Or Agony is far less of a faggot-chorus than Turilli's last solo disc The Infinite Wonders Of Creation (an album which induced my wife, who decries the use of the term 'gay' as a pejorative, to gape at my stereo and declare "man, this is gay.") I don't demand that a band 'evolve', as too often that is just an excuse to become a suck-ass trend-whore band. But is it too much for me to ask that if Rhapsody had to change their name, they could evolve into an even slightly interesting band while they were at it? Alas, Rhapsody "Of Fire" seem content to peddle a re-recording of their last three albums, and there is nothing interesting about it. Snore.