Now And Forever
Massacre Records
From the ashes of Autumn Lords, guitarist Stefan Berg, bassist Jonas and drummer Ola quickly assembled the new group Meduza. Keyboardist Jan and Greek born vocalist Apollo were eventually recruited to finalize the line up, the latter of which had already achieved success to a certain degree after singing on Majestic’s ‘Trinity Overture’. It wasn’t long before Meduza (From Pilea, Sweden) secured a label deal and headed into Andy LaRoque’s Los Angered studio in Gothenburg. Mike Wead (Mercyful Fate, King Diamond, Memento Mori) was roped in to co-produce and engineer.
From the opening double kick-drumming opener ‘Shed No Tears’, you can pretty much tell what the whole album has in store. It’s pure straight up power metal. Not that there’s anything wrong with power metal (I’ve got a few classics in my own collection), but there’s no denying the tried and true guitar formula style of Yngwie J. Malmsteen that Stefan Berg serves up at every opportunity. ‘Sleep’ and ‘Holy Ground’ are so much like Malmsteen that I needed to double check which album I was listening to.
But it’s not all bad news. ‘Twilight Of My Mind’ displays Apollo’s strong vocals, while ‘Land Of Forgotten Dreams’ provides plenty of guitar attacks. Both ‘Burn In Hell’ and ‘Curse Of Pharaoh’ also show Meduza can slow the tempo down to a atmospheric smoulder, allowing Stefan to loosen up and play an alternate to the fast paced Malmsteen carbon copy solos.
Meduza has been compared to Sonata Arctica and Stratovarius in recent times, and while they may well be close to the mark style wise, it would be only fair to wait until the band shows a little bit more originality before putting them in the same league as established acts.
Fore more information on Meduza, check out - https://www.facebook.com/massacrerecordseurope.
© Justin Donnelly.
No comments:
Post a Comment