Seven Kingdoms
The Fire Is Mine
Nightmare Records
2012
Seven Kingdoms, are a female fronted power metal band hailing from Florida, that seems to draw it’s inspiration from fantasy novels and the like.
“The Fire Is Mine” is their third effort and shows sufficient progression, from their humble and more brutal beginnings, having now evolved in a sleek and elegant, precise, and refined hybrid between say Blind Guardian and Nightwish. A less operatic Amberian Dawn, would be possible a good comparison, I guess.
People, have made, insane, fuss, over this album and I have read RAVING reviews, that call it an ABSOLUTE MASTERPIECE.
Well, while it’s in most respects indeed a fairly good album, I found it, rather predictable and apart from liking maybe 2-3 songs, like the leadoff single and video clip “After the Fall” (just a cheap performance piece – by the way) and the nice ballad “Kardia” (meaning heart in Greek) I didn’t really thought it to be a genre defining, release or even something that I would play over and over again. This is just pedestrian and run of the mill power metal.
This is not meant to be an attack against the band, but just a reality check. If this is a masterpiece, then what the hell, were the “true” masterpieces of the genre, the albums that really set the “benchmarks” by which all other albums were going to be measured up against. I can appreciate the enthusiasm of some people, but sometimes, unless that enthusiasm is really well founded, people might be left scratching their heads, ‘bout what the fuss was all about! That’s quite the case with me here, apart from a couple of tunes, I couldn’t quite really “get it”....
“The Fire Is Mine” is their third effort and shows sufficient progression, from their humble and more brutal beginnings, having now evolved in a sleek and elegant, precise, and refined hybrid between say Blind Guardian and Nightwish. A less operatic Amberian Dawn, would be possible a good comparison, I guess.
People, have made, insane, fuss, over this album and I have read RAVING reviews, that call it an ABSOLUTE MASTERPIECE.
Well, while it’s in most respects indeed a fairly good album, I found it, rather predictable and apart from liking maybe 2-3 songs, like the leadoff single and video clip “After the Fall” (just a cheap performance piece – by the way) and the nice ballad “Kardia” (meaning heart in Greek) I didn’t really thought it to be a genre defining, release or even something that I would play over and over again. This is just pedestrian and run of the mill power metal.
This is not meant to be an attack against the band, but just a reality check. If this is a masterpiece, then what the hell, were the “true” masterpieces of the genre, the albums that really set the “benchmarks” by which all other albums were going to be measured up against. I can appreciate the enthusiasm of some people, but sometimes, unless that enthusiasm is really well founded, people might be left scratching their heads, ‘bout what the fuss was all about! That’s quite the case with me here, apart from a couple of tunes, I couldn’t quite really “get it”....