The Hall Of The Olden Dreams

I dunno if you guys remember my last Dark Moor review. The precedent effort was quoted at 46/100 and I was insisting on the fact that this talentuous guys (and girl :) ) only needed a good production and also to focus their efforts on their True Metal good moments. Well, less than a year after they are back and it seems they filled the gab between good ideas with bad production to a fully produced True Metal masterpiece !! Simply unbelievable, in the beginning I couldn't accept the fact that it's the same band, but I must admit that Dark Moor does impress me with this new release. It's like they read the book "How to make a True Metal killer album", of course there is no such book, but it seems the band concentrated their efforts to deliver a bombastic release in the roots of good True Metal tradition. Musically Dark Moor could be compared to a successful merging of Rhapsody and Malmsteen, this album being of course FAR better the last albums of the mentioned band (a lot better !). The guitar mastery and melodic power of Dark Moor is simply impressive. The female vocals remind me both White Skull (without the raging voice "a la" Grave Digger of course) and Fabio Lione (Rhapsody) and they are pretty good, a lot of improvements since the precedent album. You can still perceive this little Mediterranean accent of the singer, but don't worry it's not annoying at all. The album starts with an excellent True Metal hymn called Somewhere In Dreams and is followed by an impressive song, the best of the album for me, called Maid Of Orleans, which is about the story of Joan Of Arc. After the excellent movie from Luc Besson we now get the excellent song from Dark Moor. The album goes on and on, and the more it goes the more it seems like a demonstration on how to make beautiful melodic music. Only glitch is maybe the ballad that is quite disappointing, both instrumentally (heard many times) than vocally and could have easily got ripped off the album. So aside this little detail, you've got 8 True Metal songs fully packed in this bombastic record. Heroic and epic choirs "a la" Rhapsody, strong guitar parts reminding of Malmsteen, a very good production and last but not least, a beautiful artcover, signed by M. Marschall of course. Congratulations, I never thought it would be possible for Dark Moor to improve themselves so impressively in such short amount of time. For all True Metal fans around, a must !