PlanetMosh Keeping it Metal
Unsurprisingly, this seventh album from Rome’s Kaledon is forged in the fires of pure epic metal: after all, this is a band who, over the course of the past decade, have released a six-part concept work set in medieval England – or the Kingdom of Kaledon as they refer to it. Now, they’ve turned their attention to a new tale, turning the clock of time back to a period which both precedes and coincides with that particular sequence… told you this was epic stuff!
I’ll not bother going into the details of the story – it’s told as eloquently as they can manage on their website (see link below) – but it’s safe to say that HBO ain’t gonna be picking the rights to this saga up anytime soon…
The story of Altor unfolds in a manner which is trite and predictable, in a way which would make even Roberr E Howard have hung Conan’s sword up before he had even swung it in anger: musically, the performances are pretty bog standard stuff – guitarist/composer/guiding light Alex Mele certainly knows his way around his fretboard and is a fairly decent guitarist, but the songs do not show enough diversity from the mediocre norm of “how many million notes per second can I cram into this solo”, while vocalist Marco Palazzi’s delivery lies somewhere between ZP Theart and wannabe Dio imitator Jorn.
Apart from the pathetically lame attempt at a ballad that is the lacklustre ‘Lilibeth’, everything is delivered at a breakneck pace – which leads to a further criticism about lack of variety in the sound – and the overall effect is that which you would garner from one of those trashy ‘pulp fantasy’ comic novels you used to be 20p for in the local secondhand bookshop… ‘cos that’s all you could afford!
Track list:
Innocence- Childhood
- Between The Hammer And The Anvil
- My Personal Hero
- Lilibeth
- A New Beginning
- Kephren
- Screams In The Wind
- A Dark Prison
‘Altor: The King’s Blacksmith’ is released on May 6th on Scarlet Records: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Altor-Kings-Blacksmith-Kaledon/dp/B00BMUKXMM/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1366706206&sr=1-1
Explore the concept behind Kaledon at the band’s official website, www.kaledon.com, or follow their adventures on Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/pages/KALEDON/87624904170
