• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5

Heavenly shouldn't really need an introduction these days; you either love or hate their brand of tastefully plagiarized Power Metal. In my opinion Heavenly have been on a streak of great albums ever since the awesome Sign of the Winner. Virus was always going to be a tough album to follow up, and as it stands it's the best they've released to date. I should have known by the front cover that Carpe Diem was going to be fruity. Although listening to the first two tracks you could be lured into thinking this is the same old Heavenly, I'll forewarn you now it's not. I don't know what it is that's going on but what's wrong with good old Gamma Ray/Helloween Power Metal! Seriously! I mean come on, there's only so much pomposity I can take in a year, the latest Sonata Arctica should have been seen as a warning.

As mentioned before, the album opens very well with the title track, much in the vein of material from Virus. The intro riff is fucking smoking, reminiscent of recent Symphony X. It seems Heavenly have even started ripping themselves off now – if you're a fan I guarantee you'll hear a lot of familiar stuff throughout. "Lost In Your Eyes" is your typical mid-paced Power Metal song, although the keyboards have that 80's AOR gorgonzola feel to it. However, I found it very easy to look over that due to the fact that I enjoyed their cover of "When The Rain Begins To Fall" so much. "Farewell" is when I started to scratch my head, standing as one of the most ridiculous tracks I've ever heard on a Power Metal album. There's a load of Ben Sotto and his piano on this track, and while I'm a big fan of his vocals he single handedly gives one of the gayest performances I've heard in metal, period. To make matters worse we get another stinker that probably sucks harder than "Farewell". Yes "A Better Me" features everything I hated in "Farewell". Why couldn't we have something like "Wasted Time" or "Liberty" instead of this pompous "Power Metal" version of Queen. It's possible to be influenced by Queen and still be a fantastic metal band – look at Blind Guardian!

It's about time we got some good and fortunately after the dire middle section of this album we're treated to "Ashen Paradise" which is probably the best track on the album (just ignore the fact that the intro is almost a carbon copy of "Induction" from Gamma Ray's No World Order). From here onwards there's nothing majorly offensive, however these tracks lack the magic of their earlier albums "Ode To Joy" is a decent Power Metal number but I'll assure you it's nothing you haven't heard before.

So three great tracks, two big offenders, and four average tracks that you'd expect from a third rate act. It's a shame really due to the strength of their back catalogue. I think the next album will be the deciding factor for Heavenly. If the album was full of tracks like the title track and "Ashen Paradise" we'd be in for some great times – sadly that's not the case. I have to say I'm quite disappointed with this release, the three good songs will be added to playlists but aside from that I don't think I ever want to hear this again.