Falconer - Falconer

*=Staff's pick	Upon The Grave Of Guilt* Heresy In Disguise Wings Of Serenity* A Quest For The Crown Mindtraveller* Entering Eternity Royal Galley* Substitutional World Lord Of The Blacksmiths The Past Still Lives On

Genre	Power Metal	Mathias Blad	Vocals
Tracks	12	Stefan Weinerhall	Guitar
Runningtime	52 Min.	-	Guitar
Label	Metal Blade	Stefan Weinerhall	Bass
Release	01 Feb. 2000	Karsten Larsson	Drums
Country	Sweden	Mathias Blad	Keyboards
Similar artists	---

Sweden has come to be like Italy when it comes to being the home of many great up-and comers in the metal genre. Falconer is yet another in a long row of great bands coming out from Sweden nowadays and in my opinion one of the very best. This is traditional power metal with the usual ingredients minus perhaps a few great solos but since the band's just getting started I'm sure that it will come. The guitars are still very pounding, rhythmic and "metalish" with great riffs in intros and during the verses and choruses. The vocals are very good and isn't of the somewhat too common high-pitch which is a fact I really like and gives Falconer a sound of their own.

Hence, this is plain and simply ordinary power metal but with great individuality. Some riffs might have a touch of Running Wild to them and a track named Royal Galley might give you some ideas in that department. But there's where it ends. The overall sound's got nothing to with their German colleges whatsoever and Falconer is absolutely NO Running Wild copy-cat! I just wanted to make that very clear.

The songs on the album are great from beginning to the end, which means the usual intro, verse, chorus and interlude stuff. In other words, there's just not a single bad track. So besides the solo-aspect is this a perfect metal album then? With a somewhat better production it very well could have been so. Don't get me wrong here though. It is a good production but it feels a bit too… Well I don't really know how to express this but the words "simple" and somewhat "without nuances" might give you some ideas of what I mean.

But besides this I just love Falconer and that's got nothing to do with patriotism or something like that, but just pure and sincere appreciation of these guys' work. Falconer is really something you should check out if you haven't so far and I'm positive you will like them too. It's really great to hear debut-albums like this one and from this point it could only get better.

Production	Vocals	Compositions
6,5	8,5	8

Summary
8 chalices of 10 - Mat