Iron Mask - Fifth Son Of Winterdoom

Published November 09 2013

*=Staff's pick	Back Into Mystery Like A Lion In A Cage* Only One Commandment Seven Samurai Fifth Son Of Winterdoom* Angel Eyes, Demon Soul Rock Religion Father Farewell Eagle Of Fire* Reconquista 1492 Run To Me The Picture Of Dorian Grey*

Genre	Power Metal	Mark Boals	Vocals
Tracks	12	Dushan Petrossi	Guitar
Running time	66 Min.	-	Guitar
Label	AFM Records	Vassili Moltchanov	Bass
Release	08 November 2013	Ramy Ali	Drums
Country	Belgium, et al.	Andreas Lindhal	Keyboard
Producer	Dushan Petrossi
Similar artists	---

With the endless stream of bands these days, although Fifth Son Of Winterdoom is the band's fifth release, Iron Mask is almost a new experience to me. I've heard a few tracks off their earlier releases, that I can't recall at this point though. This is never a good sign, but I decided to give this piece a shot anyway.

Iron Mask plays power metal with an occasional progressive touch and could fit with the description of neo-classical metal as well. This release is somewhat strange and at the same time kind of bland to me. It contains good or even great tracks such as the speedier tracks Like A Lion In A Cage and The Picture Of Dorian Grey, the epic ten minute title track and the catchy Eagle Of Fire. It has great vocals on and off and also stylish guitar plays, highly accurate and captivating.

Nevertheless there are too many songs that hardly can qualify even as fishbait and sometimes I wonder why the hell some of the songs even passed the state of demo recordings. They don't provide those powerful kicks and my body don't answer back with movement. Instead most of them slowly pass by in the river called Decent and are just not valid.

The verses on many tracks have what it takes to a certain degree, but the choruses don't hit hard and leave me stranded without solid satisfactory emotions. The way I see it, the album's real problem is that a major part of the songs' foundations are simply not good enough to create a good release. Just a bit too ordinary and sometimes also too faint without striking details that could turn this thing into something durable.

Performance	Originality	Production	Vocals	Songwriting
6	3	6	7	4

Summary
4 chalices of 10 - Tobbe