Steel Prophet has been a major driving force in the Power Metal genre, creating unique and fantastic albums with releases like Dark Hallucinations, Messiah and Unseen. This time around the band has gotten a new record company and also new vocalist in Nadir D'Priest and new guitarist in Pete Skermetta. Let's just say that D'Priest does a decent and quite suiting job without impressing. The fantastic talent and drama that former singer Rick
Mythiasin was able to add to
Steel Prophet was truly something extraordinary, that's even more apparently now.
When it comes to the guitars I would say that the stuff is quite firmly delivered without being exactly inspiring, the musical quality is overall solid; it's the actual song writing that's the problem.
Frankly speaking I'm disappointed when it comes to their new album, my expectations were of course high as always, but even when putting them aside I still find this release tame and unexciting a lot of the way. It seems like many songs are lacking melody, great ideas and that special something that makes you want to go back and listen to them over and over.
What doesn't help this album becoming any better is the production. I was thrilled with the powerful sound that Messiah was treated with, this is nothing close and in general it's too thin, trebled and unfocused. It's not that you can't hear what's going on and the vocals are quite bright, but it has a muddy garage sound to it, if it had been released in 1984 I could better have lived with it, but for 2004 this is just not good enough.
The album opens with
Heavenly, one of the better songs on Beware, having a dynamic flow. The verse sections become a bit monotone in length while the intense and well-played guitar solo is a more positive aspect, credit also to the creative bass performance and aggressive drumming.
Beware follows a simple rhythm path that makes it hard to stay interested for long, it's like they have run out of great riffs and stuck with a very standard one and the solo is more a muddy mess than a melodic mainstay, the mid-section break is the only really well working aspect.
Transfusion Vamp starts out very aggressively which is a good thing, I just don't think the whole noise effect thing works at all. An element that really annoys me about this cut is the overly repeated, unmelodic and boring refrain.
Leatherette has a raw drive that comes out successfully through dark guitar riffs, the quite catchy and harmoniously performed chorus is also working out just fine. This is a good track featuring one of the album's most expressive solos. This one has some of the details and spark I'm missing in general.
With
Angels we get to the albums longest song, a grooving mid-tempo creation until it explodes and gains speed with a cool break. This one could had been a better song if only the verses had been added some more melody and kept away from this rather tiresome path, towards the end the composition becomes a bit stretched out and ends quite. unfinished!
Killing Machines is an odd mixery of slightly unstructured passages, it just doesn't bring much interesting to the table, slowly staggering along to its own dull rhythm. And this coming from a band that once made entire records going in the direct opposite direction of these accusations!
You Are My Life (Gypsy Mind) to some degree leans towards Dream Deceiver by Judas Priest, especially the acoustic guitar beginning, this is not meant negatively. Vocals, keys and guitar create a rich and relaxing atmosphere before a fitting heavy part sets in for a short while. Now this is more like it, a great song that flows along naturally and has some thrilling moments, including technical drumming of high class.
Unfortunately
Lost My Way is another step backwards, again the problem being a general lack of something to move you, something memorable or captivating, even though the chorus is decent.
Political Greed (Petrol Man) adds another mystery, I simply can't see a good reason for adding muddy spoken parts over large parts of the track, it messes the bad production up even more and it is an irritating aspect, first because I can't really hear what the voice is saying and second it takes attention away for the actual music created. These speedy vocal parts obviously aren't Nadir's force, as they appear way too forced.
The instrumental
Moosilauke Cascade rounds things off with some rather melodic guitar leads woven into a more stationary basic rhythm, an ok track.
Lyrically the album deals with topics as greed, war and spirituality, overall not exactly thrilling material but most of the lyrics are fair and fit in rather well.
I don't understand how this could come so far, a repeated high quality has followed the band for so long and now this! An album by one of my favourite bands that is actually below average. Music is of course a matter of personal taste but I seriously just can't get excited about this release, and as a big fan of the band this shouldn't have been a problem if the music would just to some degree live up to earlier standards.
Written by
Tommy Monday, July 26, 2004
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