German Metallers
Seventh Avenue are ready with their fifth album, this being my first meeting with the band. The guys play classic Metal, topped off with a bit of happy-go-lucky Power Metal, as so many do it today, with happy melodies, fast drumming, screaming guitars and so on and so forth.
Songs like
Remission with it's catchiness and great flow, the emotional ballad
Voices the rocking
Domination Of Sin and
Infinite King with it's great refrain and a forceful, classic Metal feeling to it, show that the band are able to pull it off in a successful way. These tracks are the great stuff here!
The not-so-great stuff includes tracks like
Raging Fire,
Juggler Of Words and the titletrack, that all seem far too simple and easily forgotten, plus the fact that the music feels a bit like the same and the same all over again, especially the drums lack some variation, just like the happy Power Metal guitar riffs are very alike throughout the record. There's nothing challenging the listener on the record, and to just play straight ahead, unoriginal Power Metal in a successful way, takes some stronger material than most of what the disc provides.
So, what makes these guys stand out from the flock? Not much, put aside the lyrics about God, Jesus, forgiveness and the whole spectre of the Christian faith. What gets a little tiring about these sorts of
White Metal bands is that they, like some of their Satanic counterparts, have the same topic for ALL songs without exception! For some this would be a huge turnoff, as the lyrics are very worshipful and convinced Christian, but I clearly prefer this topic to overly-satanic oh-so-evil nonsense.
The technical ability of the band is all fine, and I like the singer, Herbie Langhans, who has a very classical Metal highpitch with lots of soul and nerve. On some tracks he reminds me a little about Ronnie Atkins (Pretty Meids), and his voice has a great, rough sound to it.
Unfortunately I feel like this record shows potential for something more, and would have made a great debut, but the problem is that this is
Seventh Avenue's fifth album. Now, I am not familiar with any of their other works, but I guess they probably won't evolve anymore than they already have, which is a shame, because the record drowns among all the other "good-but-not-great" records existing in this style.
There are a few killer tracks, like the ones I mentioned, lots of standard stuff, but no real bad songs. I bet some die hard Power Metallers are bound to find some good stuff here, but I would say, there's a lot of stuff out there as good as this, or better.
Listen before buying.
Written by
Nina Monday, December 20, 2004
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