Magic Never Dies

A fantastic album. Manages to stay true to everything you would want from a power metal album, but with very much its own flavor. Very upbeat and synth heavy, with incredible compositional skills being displayed by Steve Williams here. However, its speed keeps it very energetic, keeping it from feeling too soft. It's a perfect balance of positive, sweet melodies and chord progressions, and speedy, exciting metal. For this reason, I often consider Power Quest to be one of the best compromises you can play when your metal friends and your non-metal friends are hanging out. It's not aggressive enough to make anyone uncomfortable, but it won't disappoint a metalhead, given they aren't quite looking to listen to Slayer.

The vocals on this thing are also fantastic. They are very well suited to the aforementioned upbeat lead melodies, with a very unique and powerful timbre. As for the lyrics he's singing... Well, it's power metal, and though not as bad as some bands may be about this, Power Quest very often opts to have songs whose lyrics are more a collage of randomly chosen happy fantasy buzzwords, rather than actually writing lyrics. Though, to be fair, this isn't always the case, the tracks "Hold on to Love" and "Another World" seem to tell a romantic story of some kind, and even share a common guitar riff, implying some connection, and the track "The Message" is a break up song, but aside from that, most of these songs are pretty shallow lyrics-wise.

Also, speaking of "The Message" I want to note that this is the only track on the album that I don't like. The song opts for a different approach, instead of being speedy and upbeat, it's slow and sad, and I don't feel like either of those things are PQ's forte. I can take slow and sad metal songs, but I feel like for a metal band to pull that off, they need to be intense enough to back up their ballad. But with PQ's style, trying a ballad song like this, it just feels sappy. And if you can dig that, good for you, but it just didn't do it for me.

Aside from that, the only other complaint I could think of is that a lot of the songs on here feel very samey. But hey, I love this band's style so much that, for me personally, if they only had one song that sounded like this, I would only want more. So for me, that's not even a complaint, but I could at least see how someone may feel that way.

Overall though, brilliant album. Give it a listen if you haven't yet, it's well worth it.

Power Quest formed suspiciously close to the emergence of their stardom bound British contemporaries Dragonforce.

Let's not beat around the bush - they're a Dragonforce clone. Which is pretty much like watering down the already diluted.

I really feel like I keep writing the same review when it comes to these generic power metal bands. This is a copy/paste job of early Dragonforce; there is not one shred of originality or creativity to this band. This attains the level of corniness where you have to wonder if they're a parody band, but everything points to them being serious.

The lyrics are nothing but mindless fantasy drivel. At least stuff like Blind Guardian puts some story telling and some darkness into the mix, this band is just like "Weeee, I'm riding a dragon." The guitar work has been done to death. The vocalist is way sub-par in every regard, really weak and uninteresting. To top it off, this barely passes as metal at all. It's really poppy. 80's pop, poppy.

I'm not sure how to convey just how generic this is. It cannot get any more generic than this. They take something that could almost get your expectations up and then just pass proverbial wind. The beginning of the title track almost sounds like it could be cool, then just kind of stumbles into the most boring tripe. D'oh!

This sounds like the soundtrack to a kid's show - literally. If you're 9 years old that's acceptable I suppose. If you want an equally cheesy and generic, but better band, try Heavenly. If you want as cheesy, but more original and much better, Lost Horizon. Dark Moor, Wuthering Heights, Blind Guardian, Helloween, Morgana Lefay, Stormwarrior - I'm throwing out bands off the top of my head, they're all light years better than this crap. Hell, try your luck with any power metal band, and they're bound to be better than this. This band is garbage, simple as that.

In a sense, the mid 2000s could be seen as the climax of the power metal revival, as said time period saw the birth of the most exaggerated examples of its attributes in the LP format. Granted, this isn't to say that this was when the best albums occurred in a qualitative sense, as it was also the time period where many of the scene's mainstays jumped the proverbial shark and began drifting into lazier stylistic waters. This period of exaggeration is perhaps best embodied in Dragonforce's third studio offering Inhuman Rampage, which took the radically technical character of said band's earlier works and brought them into an otherworldly place that resembled a PS3 video game about as much as a stereotypical high fantasy book. Though many were wont to lump Power Quest into the same category due to their own sense of analytical laziness, by the time 2005 saw the release of Magic Never Dies, it was clear to even the uninitiated yet attentive folk that Steve Williams was about as far from his DragonHeart roots as he'd ever get.

In the grand scheme of Power Quest's career, the stylistic development from one album to the next saw the least amount of evolution between Neverworld and this one, though there still remains a fair bit of distance between the two. The hybrid sci-fi meets high fantasy theme adorning most of the lyrical content of these songs and the album art has brought about a sound that is extremely close to where Stratovarius and Freedom Call were in the late 90s. Much of this owes to a lighter guitar presence, a heightened keyboard and bass presence, and ironically enough a vocal display out of Alessio Garavello that is so audibly pristine that it could pass for Chris Bay on his happiest day. That's sort of the main distinctive of this album relative to all the others, a far more gleeful character, perhaps a bit too much so for some. While the lead guitar vs. keyboard interchanges are at about roughly the same level of intensity, Andrea Martongelli's soloing has taken on a somewhat more Brian May styled melodic character than before, which along with the album's lighter and happier character gives things a bit more of an 80s rock character than before.

The final result of these peripheral developments amid a generally unchanged stylistic direction is an album that comes off as a bit less epic than Neverworld. This doesn't owe to a lack of any of the elements that made the aforementioned album such a captivating experience but more so to overall presentation, and when taking the magical sounding orchestral prelude "Ascension" and the dense atmospheric musical journey of "Another World" by themselves, this album could be likened heavily to its predecessor. Similarly, the fast paced brilliance of "Find My Heaven" and "Strike Force" turn up the high octane Helloween goodness with a similar degree of effectiveness and even find Martongelli rolling out some busier riff work. Nipping on the aforementioned songs' heels are an impressive collection of Freedom Call oriented cruisers that are a bit more keyboard driven and chorus oriented yet still killer in "Galaxies Unknown", "Diamond Sky" and "Soulfire". In fact, when lumping in the chorally driven anthem with solos aplenty bonus track "The Longest Night" into the mix, it gets hard not to accuse Power Quest of forsaking their Dragonforce roots to ride on Freedom Call's train, and they pull it off well enough to significantly lessen the blow that was said band's disappointing 2005 flop The Circle Of Life.

For all of the positive developments and well-realized retreads of familiar territory, however, there are a few points where things get a little too sappy for their own good. Most of these moments are localized to the more rocking and mid-paced offerings on here such as "Hold On To Love" and "Children Of The Dream" where the poppy Van Halen keyboard themes enter the fray and the lyrics leave the sci-fi and fantasy realm for mundane stories of real life and love. It gets even more awkward with the musically poignant yet lyrically annoying nod to Journey in "The Message", which gets way too repetitive and cliche to hold one's interest for its bloated six minute duration (that's about two minutes too long for the radio slot that this song was likely going for). To a degree, most of the songs on here have lyrics that are generally light and generalized, but whether it is the cliche celebration of the fantasy genre typified in the title song or the somewhat comical musings of space travel on "Galaxies Unknown", there is at least a glorious musical display to compensate that is largely lacking in these other songs, even when compared to equivalent ballads and rockers such as "When I'm Gone" and "Edge Of Time" off the previous album.

Though an overall step down in quality from the impressive peak that this band hit in 2003, Magic Never Dies is a musical accomplishment to be reckoned with and points back to a time when metal could be as optimistic and fun as it can be dark and vile. There are still bands out there playing like this, but something definitely changed soon after this album came out, not only for Power Quest but for most of the power metal scene. To this day, the players that defined this band's early era rank among some of the most underrated musicians in the business, particularly Alessio Garavello, who lights up the stage with every single note here yet is generally regarded as a drop in the ocean of power metal vocalists on the cleaner side of the spectrum. Hell, the entire Power Quest name tends to be dismissed as a copycat outfit, which is blatantly untrue. It's a magical world in here, and here is to hoping that the recent resurgence of the old quest (the band reformed earlier this year) will be a long and productive one.

Power Quest seem to be a love em or hate em kind of band. Their brand of up beat flower metal is adored by some and despised by others. This album would be everything you have come to expect from this still relatively new UK band.

The album kicks of with a symphonic instrumental entitled "Ascension" Not the most bombastic intro, though at least it is kept short and to the point. The next track is the amazing "Find My Heaven" This is a grabber right from the opening riff which is very reminicent of Helloween. Next, is another keyboard driven track called "Galaxies Unknown". After this, the album gives off a strong 80's metal vibe. "Hold On To Love" and "Diamond Sky" are straight forward classic heavy metal tracks. Then comes the infectuous ballad entitled "The Message" whose chorus will stick in your head for days. The remaining 5 tracks follow the similar mix of flower metal and classic metal.

The most notable thing about "Magic Never Dies" is the production. It is leaps and bounds over the production of their prior two releases. The keys are amazing and fit perfectly in the mix and are not overused. Also, the songwriting is quite stellar as well.

I am very happy to see Power Quest still playing their brand of light power metal that we have come to know them for. This might not be the most original release of all time, but I say "If it ain't broke....don't fix it!" This should appeal to fans of Dragonforce, Helloween, Stratovarius, and Sonata Arctica.

Also, this European pressing comes with a bonus DVD containing footage from the making of "Magic Never Dies"