Lillian Axe United States

"Lillian Axe have been around the block a few times, taking a musical journey from glam metal / hard rock over progressively inclined metal to more traditional metal. The present album is a bit of melting pot, drawing on various metal style, but the basis is traditional heavy metal.

I think that, overall, the albums is pretty decent, but marked by mediocricy, which is a bit of a shame, because there certainly is a lot of good stuff on it, too.

The album starts out well with the acoustic intro "Cocoon", and then the roller coaster ride begins. Tracks like "Megaslowfade" (which contains a vocal melody which is disturbingly similar to Kiss' "I Was Made for Lovin' You"), "Jesus Wept", Ignite", "Sad Day on Planet Earth", Ignite", "The Grand Scale of Finality", "Within Your Reach", "Cold Day in Hell", and "Fire, Blood, the Earth and the Sea" all contain both weak and strong elements. The general weakness, I think, is repetitiveness within the individual song, but still, every track I've mentioned contains one or two or more interesting, sometimes genius, elements which make it worthwhile listening to.

Other tracks, I think, are very successful, such as the more progressive-like "Hibernate", "Down Below the Ocean", "Nocturnal Symphony", "Kill Me Again", and the ballady "Bllod Raining Down on Her Wings". These tracks are very good, but held back by the vocal style, which is not very versatile and more good ole rock 'n' roll-ish. I think that a more operatic style would suit this album much better.

The production is a but fuzzy, which is not a problem to me, but might be to you if you're used to the very polished productions we hear today. The drums in particular sound very strange at times. There is nothing wrong with the musicianship, though, and especially the guitar solos are blazing. They're a bi tretro, but I like that. Certainly, there's a very talented guitarist behind them.

So, this is not a bad album at all, and if you like AOR and traditional heavy metal, you might want to buy it.

(review originally posted on metalmusicarchives.com)"