Search - Anubis Gate :: Perfect Forever

Best Album In Years!

H. Freitag | San Francisco, CA United States | 03/13/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This album was released in 2005 and I just discovered it by accident. I was searching on the net and heard a track and was instantly shocked that I had missed such an amazing album. I own hundreds of prog/power metal albums and can't comprehend how I missed this one. This release epitomizes all of the qualities that I love: Heavy, mid-paced, technical and progressive, while still maintaining actual songs - in the traditional sense; and most importantly, dark, minor-sounding melodies.

In an era when so many "power metal" bands are trying to be the next neo-Helloween clone, refreshingly, this album contains none of those cliches. There are no monotonous fast double-base-drum, happy, Major, sing-song tunes. The one time they employ such a beat it's accompanied by such brutally heavy and melodic vocals and a very minor-sounding harmonized riff that's so dark and erie it's just oozing with tension...which leads to my next praise: vocalist Torben Askholm.

This guy's voice complements the music perfectly and is very unique. He has a very melodic and brutal style in a way similar to Dio, but without actually sounding like him. Torben has an uncannily unique voice - perhaps it's because of his Danish accent, which is fairly prominent; which I perceive to be a good thing. Unfortunately he has since left the band.

After repeated listens to this album, I'm convinced that the band spent a great deal of time fine-tuning these songs; there are so many brilliant but subtle nuances in the changes, riff variations and most notably, the beautiful guitar harmonies. These guys were not content to just play a riff once or twice and then employ one type of harmony: the intervals keep changing, which always keeps the listener surprised at what comes next.

I'm the type of listener that gets bored easily; and that's why I don't much care for either formulaic pop-power metal or sloppy black/death/thrash metal and unfortunately most of today's prog bands aren't heavy enough. And that's what makes this album so brilliant: they seem to have made a conscious awareness to keep the material very heavy and I like that!"