• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5

This is a solo album by this one guy who apparently plays in Seven Gates, and he I guess felt stifled in that band and so he decided to put out a solo album that is "Just Him" because, well, he's a guitar player, and guitar players always have giant fucking egos. I am always deeply suspicious of this kind of vanity project, and I have yet to be proved wrong.

This is a disc of Italian Power Metal that parties like it was 1999 – literally. This was pretty much state of the art for the genre about 10 years ago, to the point that it is hard to believe this album was just recorded, and is not in fact a relic from a decade ago. This is also heavy on the neoclassical instrumental wanking – by which we mean guitars, of course, since only the guitar and the guitar PLAYER actually matter. By track 3 it is painfully obvious that nothing even remotely interesting is going to happen, as Vitaly diddles and doodles through song after song that are essentially just guitar solos, with the occasional break for some highly generic Power Metal. The only thing good here are the vocals of Thomas Vikstrom, who is criminally wasted and underused to the extreme. Some people may enjoy this kind of fret-stroking showoff recording, but it is not really anything you need to bother with.