Reviews

The fourth album by "Greek metal powerhouse" Firewind starts off decently with "Into the Fire" and a nice acoustic intro. Vocalist Apollo Papathanasio had got some pipes on him and he puts them to good use. However, from there, the record stumbles with samey-sounding songs "Head Up High" and "Mercenary Man." Songs like "Angels Forgive Me" have them going into a Queensryche style, which is good and bad because Queensryche were interesting almost twenty years ago.

"My Loneliness" sounds like a combination of Nickelback guitars and Breaking Benjamin vocals, which does not work with this style of music at all. They rebound and redeem themselves a bit with "Circle of Life," which contains decent music and good vocals. Although it's not strong enough to distinguish itself from everything else on the record, it's a pretty good track but that's it.

The opening of "The Silent Code" works well but when Apollo comes in, he sounds more like Geoff Tate of Queensryche than anywhere else on the record. It works for a while but it can't hold up a whole record, no matter how good a vocalist he is. Lead guitarist Gus, on the other hand, can play up a storm and it's often his playing that is able to hold a song up and keep it from sinking. The fact that he had cut his teeth in other bands like Dream Evil show that he was able to be in the shadows for a while but now that he's on his own, he is able to let go and show everyone what he can do, which he does in spades.

This record was pretty good until it came to their cover of "Maniac" from "Flashdance." It just screams pretentiousness and sounds like something Celine Dion would do, which is something you don't want to be compared to, particularly if you're a metal band. Overall, the record is decent but it gets a demerit for "Maniac" which was a poor choice and should've been left off as a b-side. The record is good but not as good as it could have been.