Never-Ending

So, here’s the third album with the ”all-star projext” as they’re often call, Mystic Prophecy. What we have here is a album with nice balance between hard riffing metal with melodic and catchy-as-hell choruses. They have a fairly good singer in form of Roberto “Lia” Liapakis. He can sing good in all ways, and drag the vocals out really good. It seem like he can sings just one word in a whole minute or something. Though it seems like he like to sing like that in almost every chorus. They do all sound a little alike just because of his vocals. Anyway, they also got the guitar-genius Gus G in the band, what can I say, this guy just rule on guitar. And also worth mentioning is the thrashing drummer, Dennis Ekdahl, who has some really cool drum parts on the album. The songs are mainly written by “Lia” and the bass player Martin, and some of them by Gus. And they’ve managed to come up with some good songs here.

The album begins with the fast “Burning Bridges”. Begins with some nice leads and then breaks into thrash riffs and drums and some really heavy verses. The chorus is very very catchy and melodic and is the song’s weakest part. Gus shows some nice guitar skill with the solos. 2nd up is “Time Will Tell”, a middle track. A mid-tempo song with ultra catchy chorus. It’s nothing special, in my opinion, it has cool soloing though. The 3rd song is much better though, “Under A Darkened Sun”. It starts with a heavy thrash-riff, leads into a pretty fast, but yet heavy track, one of my favourites from the album. The chorus is as usual really catchy and melodic, this one is pretty OK though. But the strongest parts with the song is definitely the heavy verses. It follows by another track in the same way as the previous track, “Dust Of Evil”. The verses are really similar to “Under A Darkened Sun” heavy stomping guitars in a kind of gallop-way. The chorus is as always, catchy and melodic. Worth mentioning is also the really heavy part before the solo. It’s even a little bit aggressive, and I love that part. 5th up is the really fast “In Hell”. Here the speed turns up to a very high level, with rattling bass drums and ripping guitars, melodic chorus, and a pretty cool spoken-break in the middle of the songs. The solo crushes. Next is the very boring ballad, “Never Surrender”. There’s a lot of these B-ballads out there, do we really need more of these? Answer: no way! It’s the weakest track on the album for sure. “Wings If Eternity” is the following track, again we get a speedy double-bass drummer, with fast riffs too - and a really cool verse, with heavy guitars and nice drum playing. The short but very melodic, and it’s pretty bad actually. It follows by “When I’m Falling”. A middle-track, the verses are bad with a kind of Nu-metal riff, which sucks big time, a very melodic chorus which also is a bad one. The only light of the song would be the solos that Gus presents. 9th song is back to greatness though, “Warriors Of Lies”. It has a really cool intro, and then explodes into that speedy playing again. It’s just awesome, the verses are heavy with chugga-chugga riffs, and the chorus is once again very catchy, but it works. “Dead Moon Rising” begins with ripping bass drums and guitar, really cool opening. Then follows some calm verses and a little kind of sing-along chorus which is pretty nice. As on “Dust Of Evil” the part before the solo is insanely heavy and somewhat aggressive, and it lifts this song a lot, thumbs up for that part. The closing track is a in general boring instrumental, the title track, “Never-Ending”. 2 min 41 sek of boringness is what I call it, a pretty unnecessary track.

Ad you noticed the album has it’s highs, but absolutely some lows too. The most weak about the songs would be all choruses, which just are to melodic and sometimes too poppy for my taste. But in return we have all heavy and aggressive riffs, verses and instrumental parts. It’s just impossible to not headbang to the middle parts in “Dust Of Evil” and “Dead Moon Rising” I tell you. The production also helps a little bit, with it’s raw sound and also pretty heavy. But I’ve heard a lot better produced albums though, but it works, for sure. Anyway, if you’re on the hunt for some heavy riffing a’la Iced Earth with catchy and melodic choruses (which tons of other power metal bands have already) this is a album for you.

Vocals: 8/10…Production: 8/10…Drumming: 8,5/10…Compositions: 8/10
3 KILLER TRACKS: Under A Darkened Sun, Dust Of Evil, In Hell