This is a very interesting line up, consisting of very good and well experienced musicians. The singer, Roberto Dimitri Liapakis, is also fronting Valley's Eve, bassplayer Martin Albrecht is also in Valley's Eve and used to play in Stormwitch, drummer Dennis Ekdahl also plays with Raise
Hell, and Gus G. is in both
Dream Evil,
Nightrage and Firewind!
Mystic Prophecy sounds more like US Power Metal than for instance
Dream Evil. The sound is somewhat harder and relies much on a tight, up front rhythm section. It reminds me about
Iced Earth and the singer could be compared a little to Matthew Barlow in the sense of aggressiveness and tone. Unlike many comparable singers, he has a deeper tone rather than high pitched though he uses this as well, but in moderation!
Gus G. amazes me with his technical as well as lively guitarplaying! He was very good already on the first
Dream Evil album (which was the first time I heard him), called Dragonslayer, and he seems to get better and better! The solos on this album are well arranged and performed and just reek of energy and life!
The opener,
Calling From Hell introduces the album nicely, starting out with a riff, that owns a bit to
Iron Maiden and continuing with a memorable chorus! The song has a nice flow and shows a fit band!
The epic
Sing Of The Cross is one of the best tracks on Regressus, with its huge and catchy chorus and crunchy, hard guitar riffs! Starting out with a doomy, almost Sabbath like riff, before the vocals set in, providing a strong melodyline. The hard riff continues throughout the song, giving a firm fundament for all the other things going on. This midtempo piece sums up pretty well, what
Mystic Prophecy is about; it has the thrash like feeling in the rhythm section, a good catchy chorus, very good guitar work and a strong vocal line. These are the elements for the album in general.
When Demons Return has a very strong melody combined with harder parts (mainly due to the drumming) and generally a good flow. The structure of the song is very good and the changes in tempo and sound, crowned with a nice guitar solo make this song special!
The song called
Mystic Prophecy is also one of the highlights of the album, again the recipe of a chorus that's destined to get stuck in your head along with some hard hitting drumming and great guitar solo works fine!
The bad news is, that the songs on the album sound so much alike! There is certainly a need for variation! Also because the structure for each song is very much the same; a hard riff, being repeated, a melodic verse and a catchy chorus which mostly gets repeated just these few too many times. The song
Lords Of Pain is a good example of this. The song starts out with a good, hard riff and some intense drumming, slow down a little and continues with a verse, before the chorus sets in. So far, so good! But the song sort of drowns in repeated choruses after a while, which is a shame! Same goes for
Forgotten Soul.
The recipe ain't bad but at some point you just get the feeling, that too much sounds the same, and the lust for more kind of goes away a little. This is, as I said, not due to bad songs or performance, but more to the sameness of the tracks. A shame because with just a few songs that sounded a little different this album would have been a winner all the way!
With the album containing 12 songs, I can't help but thinking that maybe they should cut down the number of songs, and try to work them over a little more.
Written by
Nina Tuesday, September 16, 2003
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