Dragonhammer - Obscurity

Half decent straightforward Italian Power Metal that’s not as frilly as the usual Italian fare, both in good and bad ways. Being straightforward as it is, it avoids sounding weak and silly, but as it’s rather primitive and poorly recorded, with a clean but not impressive mix, it’s hard for it to really antagonize the primacy of the better bands out of Italy that succeed in striking a balance in all departments.
 
Opener “The Eye of the Storm” (after an obligatory intro) and “Children of the Sun” are quite good songs in the style, along with maybe the lyrical “Remember My Name” and the title track, but while a really “bad” song doesn’t exist, that doesn’t mean that the flow of the album is perfect, with the rest of the songs being hopelessly generic.
 
It’s impressive to see that there are bands that have not changed considerably in almost two decades in terms of progression and this will either be a pro for their fans or fuel to their detractors. I for one try to keep my memories of that subgenre at pre-millennial times, before things went plastic and template like, but “Obscurity” does little in the way of reminding me why I did like that style thirty or more years ago. I doubt it will help the band to rise above their current status either, but rather consign them to a future that seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Lethe…