Eden’s Curse - Cardinal

Eden’s Curse Cardinal cover
Eden’s Curse
Cardinal
AFM Records
2016
5
Irony… something of a memo that must have definitely not been passed around to the current member of this multinational poor man’s super-group (of sorts). The then band led by baldie-fuckle, who’s thankfully currently reduced to singing in some pub toilet cleaning band in the UK, had the original singer of this band with whom they had some degree of success, to save on transport costs and since he’s had gone into litigation forming his version of this band in the US to little fanfare, I guess.
 
Thorsten Köhne (of Attack) on guitars and Paul Logue on bass are the only original members remaining and even keeping the name at this point – I don’t know if it really means a thing. Despite Nicola Mijic, an impressive Tobias Sammet clone from Serbia, doing an impeccable job, the material he’s got to work with has on this album been reduced from some pretty decent songs on his debut with the band to some very generic and a dime a dozen songs, that you’ve heard a million other 2nd and 3rd tier bands doing much better. Edguy called and they want a couple of lines from opener “Prophets of Doom” back and it gets worse with stuff like the “funky” “Kingdom of Solitude” that would hardly see the outside of Gate Studios, with more cliché lines and Edguy references than I’d care to shake a stick at. Oh yeah, Edguy called again and they want that line from “King of Fools” back too. The Tobi-force is strong with these folk too, on stuff like “Saints & Sinners” although they somehow funk the chorus and the epic closer “Jericho” that at least rips off Edguy at their better couple of albums, but again not perfectly, but like a poor facsimile. The duet with Liv Kristine on “Unconditional” is not bad, performance wise, but the song seriously lacks.
 
I guess someone should exorcise an Edguy album out of these guys… or Michael Eden’s ghost laughing in the ruins (pun intended). Mijic is probably the sole reason to enjoy this very generic offering and that’s because his singing is great, but he’s only a singer and when the songs quite lack… there’s only as much as one can do. From a once promising band to a not so fascinating Edguy clone… it’s a cardinal sin.