Messiah's
Kiss debut offers straight-ahead classic Heavy Metal in the tradition of
Judas Priest and Accept, added a considerable dose of Power Metal influences.
The heavy opening track
Light In The Black is a cool creation featuring driving lead harmonies, fierce riffing and forceful double bass drumming. Very traditional in structure but well performed.
Dream Evil relies bit too much on a stationary rhythm guitar riff but the gloomy verse line leading up to the chorus sounds fantastic.
Mike Tirelli's raw and powerful voice fits this album well and his varied performance in this song is high class.
His tone in
Blood, Sweat & Tears is very close to Rob Halford, a bit too close for my taste. Unfortunately the song is quite uninteresting and simple, the dull chorus being way overused, this song just irritates me.
Night Comes Down is my favourite piece on the disc; its dreaming atmospheric start invites you into a groovy and hard rocking composition with massive bass lines and a great bombastic chorus.
Tight rhythm guitar work, detailed drumming and a cool relaxing guitar solo all helps in making this a compact and intriguing track.
The very powerful
Blood Of The Kings round things off with its 7-minute duration, having some welcomed dynamic elements but again also a chorus line that is easily forgotten.
I won't go any further into describing the remaining songs, generally they can be labelled standard Metal tunes that are neither bad nor especially good and there you have the albums biggest problem in a nutshell, a feeling of mediocrity; I clearly miss more memorable refrains, spectacular melodies and elements that make the songs stand out or enhance the otherwise rather simple path.
The lyrical universe follows classical Metal themes as well; gaining inner strength, heroism, feelings of longing and so on, above average but nothing really spectacular and quite ordinary from time to time.
The sound is transparent but a bit too trebled; the overall band performance is firm and competent but then again it won't go down in history as anything really special or creative.
In this very crowded Heavy Metal/Power Metal scene I don't think Messiah's
Kiss offers much new or exciting, still a tight and OK disc.
Written by
Tommy Thursday, December 30, 2004
Show all reviews by TommyRatingsTommy: 5/10Members: 6/10 - Average of 1 ratings.
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