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Having heard a few demo tracks prior to the album and then hearing the majestic "Combined Souls" Enbound were set in my mind to fill the void Heed so abruptly vacated. All the signs pointed to an excellent Swedish heavy/power metal album with enough melody to keep even the Mrs happy. Thus it is often with great expectations that sore disappointments rear their ugly faces and I hate to say it but And She Says Gold was a slight letdown.

I was really expecting greatness after hearing "Combined the Souls", and I think the album does start the show under false pretenses. Whilst hardly the most masochistic of power metal doing the rounds, the rest of the album does sound slightly wimpier in comparison. Not necessarily a bad thing of course, giving this more weight to the fans of the Italian school. "Noiseless Bullet" shows this quite well, almost taking the Return to Heaven Denied approach in arrangement and boasting a damn fine chorus. "Squeals of War" tries to throw a punch out of the flower bed but falls a little flat messing with clean channel and acoustic work. Following this is the poor lounge ballad "Frozen to Be" complete with faux female jazz vocals.

"Under a Spell" kicks things back up a notch, opening with a pure gorgonzola vocal harmony, this track largely takes the mid-paced Sonata Arctica/Stratovarius mold, which is cool. Next up we have "Untitled X" (great song title...) which pretty much stands as a poor man's Kamelot. Fortunately they follow this up with three of the album's best tracks, before ruining things again with another shitty ballad. After this point they pretty much lose the plot and the album loses itself to meandering crap and a cover of Michael Jackson's "Beat It".

So, despite my disappointment at this album not sounding like I'd hoped, not all was lost. Sure, just under half of the tracks are throw-away garbage; but the ones that are cool were definitely worth it (and in fact are really good). Fans of Sonata Arctica, Kamelot, and Labyrinth and so on will definitely find something to treasure here. But you have been warned; there is a fair share of filler to wade through.