Independent
2014
1. Never Fades
2. Culture War Pt. 1: Dumas
3. Culture War Pt. 2: Reconquest
4. Umbra Wars
5. Fight With Time
6. Corruption
7. Trivial
8. Spaceshift
9. A Place Beyond
10. Farewell
Visions Of Fire is Valkeryon's first album so I go in not knowing a whole lot about them or having much in the way of expectations. This is the sort of album I saw the band advertising and decided to give a shot. Hailing from Panama this band caught my attention enough on a preview of a couple of their songs which seemed to have a pretty well put together power/prog sort of sound.
Well, listening to this my initial preview of the band mostly represents their sound. This is a pretty well produced, good sounding sort of Power/Prog band. Musically, I get reminders of Sonta Arctica and Royal Hunt. This is smooth flowing stuff with a fair amount of keyboard touches and a bit of symphonic flare here and there. vocally those comparisons also ring true as I hear some Tony Kakko, DC Cooper, and maybe a little Michael Grant. Not quite as deep as the later, but there is sort of a deep, resonant touch to the singing. At a glance listening to a couple tracks this band sounds pretty solid.
Getting a little more into the meat of the album and listening to it though I've gotta say that the songs start to bleed together as the album gos on. I also find that the music would probably benefit from a bit more heaviness/edge to the guitar as this just gets really bouncy and happy. It's the kind of sugary sweet power sound that starts to wear on me after awhile and it's just a little constant and over the top in that regard. None of the songs are bad, but the lack of the Metal holds most of the songs back a wee bit for me. Oddly the exception to this is the instrumental A Place Beyond which has more heaviness to the guitar and is a nice bit of proggy music. Maybe if more of the album was like this (with added vocals) I'd enjoy it more. Farewell and Never Fades are also pretty good smooth flowing power/prog type tracks even if they are a tad happy.
If you like power/prog that is decidedly on the light and happy side this isn't bad, but the band could benefit from a bit more variation in tempo and dialing back the tralala feel a little. Still, this is a decent power/prog debut that I could see appealing to the right audience who likes their metal pretty fluffy.
Highlights: A Place Beyond, Farewell, Never Fades
Rating - 3.0/5
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