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Okay, I've gotta say something here – Rhapsody of Fire, or Rhapsody, or whatever they're called, sucks. They've always been really dull, but at least back in the 90s when they started it was something original and so I couldn't entirely fault it. Fast forward 15 years and they've evolved as much as a rock would. You'd think they would at least become more competent songwriters, or learn to string together something that actually manages to captivate, but noooo. From Chaos to Eternity is mostly just a giant musical turd that I can't wait to be rid of forever.

The basic formula here is annoying trilling melodic guitar lines, saccharine vocals from the ever-wimpy Fabio Lione, tons of bombastic, meaningless choirs, tons of orchestrations that are about as engaging as the back of a Lucky Charms cereal box and a lack of any substance. This band doesn't attempt to do anything besides pile on more and more without any reason for it besides sounding "epic." I'm not entirely opposed to these kinds of ear-candy bands, but for god's sake have some kind of catchy hook! Inject some drama and presence! Make your riffs count for something!

Rhapsody of Fire – Christ, that name – just noodle on and on with long, overzealously crammed and claustrophobic songs that have no room to breathe or create drama. Hard to do that when they're going all ADD style and shoving a zillion layers of orchestrations and solos and choirs in our faces every second. There's barely a moment on here that the band actually slows down and tries to do something other than annoy rampantly, and mostly that's on the ballad, which is more on the really boring side of things as opposed to the annoying side.

The title track has a catchy chorus, but then it's just so blatant and obvious, all of it, that I feel oversaturated after listening to it. "Aeons of Raging Darkness" is a laughable attempt at sounding ‘dark,' and it's about as dark as a sunny meadow with pixies skipping through it. Rhapsody really shouldn't bother with the harsh vocals; they're terrible and just sound awkward. The 19 minute boreathon "Heroes of the Waterfall's Kingdom" has some nice orchestrations, but still, 19 minutes? Why? There are so many other things you could do with 19 minutes of free time. You could go jog around the block in that time, or read a short story by Ernest Hemingway. Why would you ever choose to listen to this?

I hate those trilling neoclassical guitar lines. I hate Fabio's constantly wimpy, powerless over-emoting. I hate the annoying songs that somehow manage to have 5 different things happening in the span of 20 seconds, and none of it in any way interesting or meaningful. I pretty much just hate this band.