Review by JD on March 16, 2012.

Power Metal has two distinct sides to it. One side is majestic and heavy with talent to spare, while the other can be basically explained as almost cartoonish with a side order of mundane. This sub-genre has some amazing bands in it, but because of a glut of them over the years, the genre has been weakened by regurgitating the music.

Excalion (an error in spelling seems to be the cause for the name) is a Finnish band that has been around since about 2000/2001. The seem to play melodic styled Power Metal, despite coming from a country known for some nasty Death Metal and they forgo most of the European style of Power Metal, coming closer to the US Power Metal scene instead with its more midrange vocals and grinding style of guitars with the accent on sweeping melodies.

There are a varied range of songs make up this album, showing a few different sides of the whole Power Metal going from a proggish sort of thing to straight ahead ands no holds Power metal. Sort of a heavily Americanized version of Children Of Bodom. Seemingly wanting to be both sides of this musical fence, makes them never really find themselves.

I like the whole album, but I was not blown away by either the music or the lyrics in the end. It seems that the band gets to a certain point in the music, then flattens out and the songs die there - and never once realizing the promise that the have lurking nearby them. Excalion is good, but very uneventful at best as they brand of metal was tending to get stale fast.

It is worth a listen or two in the end, but not really much else.

Categorical Rating Breakdown

Musicianship:7
Atmosphere: 6
Production: 7
Originality: 6
Overall: 7

Rating: 6.6 out of 10