Review Summary: For those who like power metal, this is an exceptional release. For those who like technical power metal, this may be one of the greatest power metal albums ever.
Eternity's End is a band I've heard a good bit about before November when they released their 3rd studio album Embers of War, which was around when I started listening to them. As you may know, in this area of prog and neoclassical metal, there are some keywords that get thrown around a lot; "technical", "blazing", "hypersonic", "shred-tastic", etc. Especially for prog metal reviewers, to be constantly covering bands of impressive technical chops, it is easy to become desensitized and grow a tolerance for musicians' audible skill in music. This is why it is all the more noteworthy that I was pretty much aghast by the level of technical ability that these guys have. To put it another way, this band has reached a level of mechanical skill that very few musicians will ever reach; I'm talking the top one percent of the top one percent of musicians, essentially the billionaire class of mechanical skill. And it goes without saying that this is the most technical band I've reviewed.
Looking more into the relevant details of this band's history, one will find out that Eternity's End was founded by three ex-members of Obscura: Hannes Grossman, Christian Münzner, and Linus Klausenitzer. Ahh, hah! The world makes sense now. I have thought on a couple of occasions that this is Obscura-level musicianship, especially in the sweeping guitar solos, occasional grinding bass solos, and even in their compact songwriting style. What pleases me, even more, is that their history shows a brief but impressive discography and a clear accelerating trajectory in the quality of their work, with each album better than the last.
I'm not even sure what the lyrical content of this album is about but I assume it is about fantasy or, in other words, stereotypical power metal stuff. From the gorgeously illustrated album cover, it seems an albino orc is battling a robot Viking-looking fellow in the courtyard of an industrial castle with airships, explosions, and a flame-ridden sky. So yeah, pretty much stereotypical power metal stuff. I like to think all of this going on in the album cover exemplifies the sheer dense action going on in the musical compositions.
What you will get from this is essentially a ton of neoclassical, almost speed-metal, guitar shred after guitar shred. Essentially, every guitar in this is shredding, almost as though every instrument is on its own mission to grind up the listener and destroy everything in its path. I also love the occasional post-Cynic type of bass solo only comparable to what one would hear from Obscura albums. Hannes Grossman is an extremely celebrated metal drummer for a reason, hit fills are relentless and are mixed to have a deep impact on the compositions. The lead vocals are the only thing I was not too fond of at the beginning but they have some time to shine. For example, Iuri Sanson shows off his high range well and brings in a melodic chorus amongst the instrumental onslaught in "Hounds of Tindalos". However, his voice can sound overly strained and often comes out sounding like he needs to drink some water. The situation of this band really takes me back to the following Dream Theater meme.
What is also cool about this album is that because the musicians have non-power-metal backgrounds, they provide a somewhat aesthetically different album than what it might have sounded like without their history in technical death metal. In Embers of War, one might be able to hear Symphony X, Blind Guardian, Lost Horizon, or Yngwie Malmsteen influences but there is a kind of brutally ruthless undertone to it all. This may, of course, just be my mental projection into the album, retrospectively, knowing they came from tech death. But I genuinely hear this, god damn it! However, I do not hear this so vividly that it makes me believe the band made a groundbreaking innovation to what defines power metal. In other words, I review albums in a way where about one-fifth of the overall score is determined by how much I feel the band made something unique, creative, unconventional, and original; something that cannot be easily traced to its component influences. This album generally has very few flaws but the way they conform to technical power metal tropes is their most vivacious weakness. This is an album that pushes new grounds in terms of mechanical boundaries, rather than in terms of creative boundaries.
Attribution: https://theprogressivesubway.com/2022/01/19/reports-from-the-underground-albums-we-missed-in-2021/
