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Dragons: Check. Knight with sword: Check. Double-bass drum abused so much it could file a sexual-harrassment lawsuit: Check. High-pitched-sometimes-too-girlie vocals: Check. Keyboards: Check. If you haven't figured it out by now, Dragonland present us with a very standard power metal album that incorporates all the usual ingredients. I guess I could say the band sounds a bit like a poor man's Rhapsody, playing in the same field but without Rhapsody's expert handling. The album has the epic feel that the band was aiming for, but the quality varies quite a bit. Too often have I heard a passage that made me go "What the fuck?", trying to figure out exactly what they thought they would accomplish by suddenly jumping into full-speed keyboards and double-bass. There's just too many annoyances to really enjoy the album from beginning to end. What this ends up being is a sound that's way overloaded and ends up sounding chaotic - in a bad way. The vocalist is pretty good with a voice that is very well fit for this type of music, but he's in no way unique - I couldn't help but think of a few other albums where I heard pretty much the same voice. There are some good moments, of course, but too much crap made its way in, ruining the good stuff. I like power metal, but frankly this needs work. The band needs to steer away from the over-the-top overdone stuff and do their own thing. Maybe on the next album, there's still potential here, after all.

This album is not necessarily bad, but has no originality whatsoever, and Dragonland got in the bandwagon too late for their own good. I can only recommend this to people who just can't get enough of over-the-top power metal, or to those who haven't been overexposed to the sound yet. For the others, there's nothing here that you haven't heard before.

Additional Information

Japanese edition with bonus track