Week 34: In Flames - Dreamscape

The artist: In Flames are one of the key melodic death metal bands (or rather used to be) who have received mainstream success over the last decade. Whether it turned for the better or worse is up to you. Personally they were better when they were playing melodic death metal and not going mainstream and that's something many metal fans will agree with whether they like them or not. The first few albums can at least be seen as decent releases, although your mileage may vary for the debut album Lunar Strain. Infact, that term applies to In Flames as a whole since some of the later works have been fairly praised.

The album: Lunar Strain is In Flames' debut album. This was a time in In Flames before Anders Fridén was even in the band and now he's the longest running member in the band. Lunar Strain was very underdeveloped for In Flames but the album opener Behind Space has become a popular song for them. This album had folk music elements to it which can easily be seen with the instrumental Hårgalåten and the second part of Everlost. The folk elements were hit and miss for In Flames but they got better with it on the following album The Jester Race. The only other major flaw with this album is how short Starforsaken feels. After the solo ends, it feels there was meant to be more for the song than we've heard. Even with these flaws, it's still an album to pick up if you really enjoy the older In Flames or even appreciate their music both old and new.

The song: Dreamscape is one of the two instrumental tracks on Lunar Strain. The instrumental remains consistent with its melodic riffs that make it sound like In Flames' counterpart to Iron Maiden's Transylvania. The sound production is nicely mixed for this track since the bass is easy to hear and for their debut album that had some rough edges, it's a godsend the production value is in good shape. With a short length of 3:45, Dreamscape has the right length of time and gives those beautiful riffs enough time to get stuck in your head.

Manilla Road to the World - Part 3: Road of Kings (Open the Gates)

Open the Gates is the second album in Manilla Road's "classic trio". It features several songs that would become fan favourites such as Metalstorm, the title track and Witches Brew. Personally it's the weakest album in the classic trio and there's a lot of other works outside this album that strikes out better than the songs here overall. Still, it's one album that deserves to be picked up.

Road of Kings starts with a lengthy intro that should bring a lot of enjoyment to the song. What easily stikes out here is the riffs as well as the rhythmatic drumming which is well played by Randy Foxe. The intro even features a solo at around a minute in that's very short but sweet. Mark Shelton does kick in with his vocals and this has to be one of his better songs in terms of vocal performance. The echo from his vocals adds an atmosphere to the song that should clear away the doubt of what many have had troubles with when listening to Manilla Road. The vocals in general of the band may need an acquired taste but this song should be easy to settle in with such great singing performance here. Most of the album's songs are based on the legends of King Arthur and this song is one of them. This song shows the younger days of King Arthur and his future to become king someday. Overall, Road of Kings is an excellent song and one of the more accessible songs by Manilla Road to get new listeners to sink in with their music.

Week 33: Savatage - The Hourglass

The artist: Savatage have had quite a career with their music. They started off as speed metal with Sirens and The Dungeons Are Calling EP. They didn't become truly established until Hall of the Mountain King. With the siblings Jon and Criss Oliva in the band, they knew where they wanted to go with Savatage and went on releasing several albums until Criss Olivia was unfortunately killed by a drunken driver in 1993. Despite this, Jon went on with the band and released a few more albums before focusing more on Trans-Siberian Orchestra and Jon Olivia's Pain. Savatage has been put on hold ever since and the odds of Jon Olivia putting Savatage back on the road is slim to none. Still, there's a lot to check out from this band and even one of the post-Criss Olivia albums is worth listening to.

The album: The Wake of Magellan is the concept album based on the Maersk Dubai incident and the Irish reporter Veronica Guerin, two real life events. They also incorporate to a story about a spanish sailor who wanted to end his life on his boat in the middle of the Atlantic ocean. His wishes are turned back as soon as he sees a man drowning in the middle of the ocean and saves his life. His morale was how precious every hour of life is and lives on. There are many great tracks in this album such as Turns to Me, the instrumental Underture and the title track. The highlight of the album has to be the album closer The Hourglass which is this week's pick.

The song: The Hourglass is the grand finale for the tale of The Wake of Magellan. This song picks off from where the sailor saves the the drowning man. Their journey back home isn't an easy one since the two head to a storm in the sea and this is what makes The Hourglass a climatic ending to the album, especially with Zak Stevens' vocals. If there's any justification for Zak Stevens, it's this very song. The way his voices are multi-layered at around 5 minutes in puts the situation at the very top and gets the two individuals through the terror on the sea, thus making it a happy and emotional ending. It better make you feel you were at an incredible journey in the sea and saying farewell to the ship once the song ends. Overall, The Hourglass is that one song that makes The Wake of Magellan worth hearing in its entirety for its highly climatic ending. Having Zak Stevens in the band was no mistake!

Week 32: Van Canto - Take to the Sky

The artist: Van Canto are no doubt an oddball. Out of all 52 artists featured in Monday Metal Treasures, they are the only one who play heavy metal a cappella. The only instrument they provide are drums but even if you don't consider the drums, the vocals are still sung in a heavy metal style. Van Canto have become notable over the last few years with covering heavy metal classics such as Fear of the Dark, Kings of Metal and Master of Puppets in a cappella. With these covers, you can tell Van Canto are here to do something different in heavy metal as well as enjoying themselves. It may look like a gimmick but why should the fun be taken away by anyone?

The album: Hero is Van Canto's second album where half of the songs are actually covers. Personally it would be better if they had a whole album dedicated to covers but the mixture of both original and covers works pretty well here and make them part of the album. Looking beyond the covers, they have great songs such as Speed of Light, Pathfinder and Take to the Sky. Definitely worth picking up this album for the original songs as well as the covers.

The song: It's funny to even describe the a cappella vocals here but the song starts off with some "dum dum duuum". Not all of Van Canto's songs consist of "rakkarakka" and "riddly diddly" (Ned Flanders, much?) but it's humorous to hear the backing vocals saying "one" constantly as part of the music that would have been instruments for any other band, The best of all about the vocals is Hansi Kursch of Blind Guardian as the guest musician. They even have a woman on vocals for one section of the songs so there's a nice variety of singers here. The only thing that really sticks out like a sore thumb is the solos. It's hard to tell whether they're actually guitar solos or the a cappella vocals immitating them. If it's the latter they sound rather fake and this is one thing they should improve on or try to avoid. Still, putting the solos aside, it's still lots of fun to listen to Van Canto, especially a song that features a well praised vocalist such as Hansi Kursch.

Week 31: Candlemass - Spellbreaker

The artist: Candlemass are a leading band in doom metal. Although they're not the pioneers of doom metal considering Black Sabbath had strong doom metal influences for their music, there's no doubt that Candlemass have made an impact on doom metal and should be noted as one of the key bands of the genre, even if there's several different subgenres of doom metal such as sludge metal, funeral doom, drone and even a crossover with death metal. Candlemass fall under epic doom metal and that shouldn't be doubted at all considering the name of their debut album Epicus Doomicus Metallicus. Candlemass have gone through some changes with their line-ups but the most recognisable ones are the original band members for the debut album, Messiah Marcolin era and the current Robert Lowe era. Those two along with Johan Längqvist are great vocalists and provide the right voices for their respective albums. Along with great vocalists, there's also fantastic riffs throughout their career and that's what makes doom metal great, especially Black Sabbath with Tony Iommi on guitar.

The album: The self-titled album is Candlemass' comeback album after reforming the band with Messiah on vocals. The reunion was definitely worth doing for this album, even though Messiah would leave the band a year after. Even so, he provided one more great album with Candlemass and this is easily the most consistent Messiah Candlemass album to date. Nightfall and Tales of Creation may not have an easy sitting with the interludes thrown in but the most self-titled album has is The Man Who Fell from the Sky which is a great instrumental and doesn't feel like it was randomly thrown in. This album provides nine doom crushing tunes and all of them reminded the listeners what made Candlemass a great addition in doom metal.

The song: Spellbreaker breaks out with a crunching riff just like any other Candlemass song but there's always some character between all the riffs they play and this song is no exception. The song may start off rather slow but it soon speeds up, even though doom metal is typically slow. During the second section of the song, what needs to be noted is Messiah's excellent singing. He may have some pointless wailing in these parts of the song but it shows us all his singing capabilities and why he was the best vocalist for Candlemass. The solo in the middle section is one of the finest Candlemass have provided to the vocalists. It starts off slow but speeds up while the rest of the band keep its pace as it is.

The lyrical content is based on Jesus Christ and God and while Christianity may not be a topic to talk about in heavy metal, Candlemass put stories based on the bible in a darker tone to give them a whole new meaning. This doesn't necessarily mean they're christian metal and if you can talk about a religious story in a different spin, the results can turn out nicely as shown here. In conclusion, Spellbreaker shows great capabilities of the band for its drumming, doomy riffs, dark stories, tempo changes and of course, Messiah's excellent vocal range.

Manilla Road to the World - Part 2: Dreams of Eschaton/Epilogue (Crystal Logic)

Crystal Logic is Manilla Road's third album and starts to show the true style of the band moving away from the progressive rock and space rock elements that were present previously. Crystal Logic also gave the band the most recognition they ever received throughout their career with the hit song Necropolis. There was even a song that made a radio-friendly attempt which only ended up as being a song that sticks out like a sore thumb in the album and would have been better off as a bonus track. Despite that, it's still a decent song but the rest of the songs are better by far.

Crystal Logic contains tempo changing tracks such as The Riddle Master and The Ram to add a lot of interest to the songs as well as the title track that contains a thrashy feel to it and has even had the same riff used by several thrash metal bands. The absolute jawdropping moment has to be the album closer Dreams of Eschaton which happens to be today's Manilla Roadkill song. Crystal Logic is the most accessible Manilla Road album and is definitely an album worth picking. The only flaw that can be found in the whole album is the placement of Feeling Free Again.

Dreams of Eschaton is the 12 minute album closer that certainly deserves to be described as epic. The song starts off with an acoustic folk-ish intro where the lyrics speak of a vision of a nuclear apocalypse. Just after two minutes in, the song changes to heavy riffages and the lyrics describe the true chaos of the apocalypse where the antichrist will soon rise up and destroy everything. The lyrics even have a bizarre mix of Ragnarok of King Arthur but if everything is going to hell, you'd expect chaos to happen. The third section of the song at six minutes in is an instrumental section with an awesomely song that gradually fades out to the album's epilogue.

Although the epilogue track was originally an individual track (not heard on the embedded video), the song transition from Dreams of Eschaton to the ending flows so well that merging the two tracks together on the re-release makes a lot of sense. The epilogue track is somewhat scary with the piano and the screaming you hear right at the end but again, this is concluding a song that pictures the end of the world and the screams at the apocalypse are to be expected. Overall, Dreams of Eschaton is an excellent song in Crystal Logic and if the world is about to end, this should be the last song to be listened to before it all goes.

Week 30: Legend - The Golden Bell

The artist: Finishing off American traditional metal month, we have Legend, more specifically the Legend from Connecticut. They are a short lived band who only ever released one album in 1979. Despite their brief time on the road, Legend have had an influence on some of the American traditional metal bands today. The best example is Slough Feg who covered The Wizard's Vengeance on Twilight of the Idols. Whoever looked further in the cover songs by Slough Feg will have come across Legend at some point. The band split up a few years later after Ray Frigon left the band. The rest of the band felt there was no strong replacement for him and split up. Unfortunately, the frontman Kevin Nugent passed away in his sleep in 1983. If it weren't for that, he could have returned to this band and made plenty more great material for the metal world.

The album: Fröm the Fjörds is Legend's only album. Although the psychadelic rock/blues rock elements were strong, it's hard to deny this band as heavy metal considering The Destroyer, The Wizard's Vengeance and the instrumental The Confrontation. There were even a few songs about vikings and this was a time before the term viking metal even existed. You can easily tell there was a lot of Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin influences here and while it may seem they were just another band who sounded too much like them, Legend would have further developed their musical style if Kevin Nugent was still with us. Fröm the Fjörds is an extremely rare album on CD but if you ever come across it on eBay or wherever, be sure to pick it up right away as it might be a once in a lifetime chance.

The song: The Golden Bell is the ballad of the album and for 7 minutes this song accomplishes a lot. The moment you hear the intro of the song, you know there's something magical about it. What has to be noted is Kevin Nugent's great vocal performance. He has the emotion to show what's going on through the song and there's definitely something depressing about the line "For our lives may too soon end" which could be seen as harsher in hindsight considering Kevin would pass away a few years later. The song goes in an instrumental phase where the psychadelic rock elements truly show in the album. The second half of the song continues the psychadelic phase with vocals and eventually returns to the soft side of the track to be heard once more.

The lyrics are based on Greek mythology and although many metal bands have covered Greek mythology, hearing a song about Poseidon seems rare for some reason. It's not just about Poseidon, though as it shows Hades taking over the world and the world being saved by pegasus and the golden bell at the temple. Overall, The Golden Bell has to be one of the most beautiful metal songs ever played with some greatly crafted tempo and mood changes. This is a legend that's been forgotten and wrongfully so.