Sunrise in Riverland

It's not that Insania is a bad band. Not at all. They have strong riffs, a consistent sound, and a nice headbanging feeling to them. It's just that . . . well . . .

They're so . . . bland. Cookie-cutter. Uninspired. Dime a dozen. However you care to express a complete lack of uniqueness and originality.

As thrashy Power Metal bands go, Insania has some riffs that are pretty good. The guitars are solid and they aren't overshadowed by any of the other instruments. The vocalist is solid, although his range leaves something to be desired. It's just that all of their songs sound really similar. A lot of the riffs are the same, and the drummer makes the fatal mistake of playing what is more or less a 1-2 beat THE ENTIRE ALBUM, contributing to the general lethargy that really hits this album hard.

Note to readers: OSheaman's First Law of Metal states that a song can be considered a good song if and only if a) the song is good AND b) the song only lasts for one song. If the song is repeated throughout the entire album, then it becomes just as shitty as it would be if it was actually shitty to begin with.

Now, Insania doesn't completely fuck this up. Occasionally we hit on something worth talking about, as we do in 2 songs; Land of the Winter Sun (a good-sounding song, but it fails to pass both checkpoints of OSheaman's First Law of Metal in that Insania pretty much makes the entire album sound like this one song), and Time of the Prophecies (which is where after repeating the same riffs and drum beats for 11 songs in a row, Insania finally gets together and produces their second original-sounding song on the album). In general, however, this album is simply too uninspired to rise to any sort of heights in the highly competitive world of Power Metal. If you want a band that sounds similar to this, but with more ass-kicking potential, go get yourself a copy of Manticora. I would only recommend purchasing this album if you have absolutely cleaned out the world of decent Power metal and are looking for something, anything to add to your collection. This album, however well-intentioned, is nothing but filler.

Okay now, Insania, in some people's opinion, may just be standard faire power metal, but I'd disagree with that statement. They do have their similarities to other bands such as Helloween, Stratovarius, etc, but this doesn't mean that they don't have their own sound. Insania is capable of incorporating a lush, majestic, and classical feel to their music without going overboard with it, so just give songs like 'Land of the Wintersun' and the Stratovarius-inspired track 'Lost In Time' a listen and you'll know what I'm talking about. However. I still find it hard to pick between this and the debut album.

Other songs of particular greatness are the wonderful, majestic ballad 'Angels In the Sky', the awesomely fast-paced emotional track 'Dangerous Mind', and the up-tempo, melodic-as-hell track known as 'Beware of the Dragons'. The biggest and only problem with the album is the placement of certain tracks. The couple of songs that aren't so great are placed at the end, making this album seem thin after track 7 or so. The title track here is pretty mediocre for Insania standards, and 'Time of the Prophecies' isn't the best as far as being the closing song goes. 'Tears of the Nature' shows a lot of promise on the latter half of the album, but comes nowhere close to any of the greatness of the first 6 tracks. This makes me think they should've put two of the first few songs at the end of the album to make it flow better from beginning to end.

All in all, this album still shows off some consistency as the melody and songwriting is actually heightened in quality over the debut even though the debut is still good and just about parallel and equal to this one overall. Anyway, this is their most melodic album, but not their best album.