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Heavy Metal is a genre that, when done correctly, can result in some of the greatest and most epic pieces of music available. When done incorrectly, however, Heavy Metal can be cheesy, tacky, and boring. Visions of Fire claims its ground right in the middle, providing a nice slab of music for those devoted to Heavy Metal that will probably go right over the heads of fans of other genres.

Just to get things straight, Dragonsfire do a lot of great things on this album. I could tell after listening to the first two tracks, "Devil's Road" and "Wings of Death," that this would be a pretty straightforward Heavy Metal album. I was correct: the instruments never go too over the top and mostly stick to the same chord progression on each track, the layout of the songs are fairly consistent throughout the album, and vocalist Torsten Herbert does his best to imitate greats like Bruce Dickinson and Rob Halford. This simplistic approach may seem like a detriment for some, but it produces some really catchy songs, like "The Defendant" and "Devil's Road." However, the catchiness of these songs cannot stop a good number of them from blending together, and for every great track this album provides there is a mostly forgettable one to balance it out. The simplistic approach, which I felt was a plus at first, soon turned slightly monotonous. This shouldn't turn fans of Heavy Metal off, however, because there really is some talent to be found in this release.

As mentioned before, the vocals are reminiscent of pretty much every other Heavy Metal release, and match the music well. It does sometimes sound that Herbert has trouble hitting those high notes, but this is ultimately ignorable and inconsequential. The only thing that bring the vocals down are the lyrics, which range from fittingly epic to unnecessarily cheesy. For example, from the track "Burning for Metal:" "In the early eighties/ Metal ruled the world/ The screams of thousand voices/ The power reigned the earth." I can understand Dragonsfire trying to support a genre of music they love, but lyrics these are utterly unnecessary. If they had instead replaced these lyrics with ones that would actually tell a story, then this album could be ranked higher among the other modern Heavy Metal releases.

Ultimately, Visions of Fire is a decent release, but is nothing revolutionary. Many of the songs are catchy, but many are forgettable. Dragonsfire shows a lot of potential on this release, and if they decide to complicate their music a bit and change the tone of their lyrics then they could be more successful. For now, however, Heavy Metal fans should give this album a quick listen and keep this band in their back of their mind.