White Skull - The Dark Age

*=Staff's pick	Penitenziagite (intro) The Dark Age* Grand Inquisitor Maid of Orléans* New Crusade The Edict Voice from the Heaven Devil´s Woman* Torture A New Handbook Sentence of Death Theme for the Innocence

Genre	Power Metal	Gus Gabarró	Vocals
Tracks	12	Tony "Mad" Fontó	Guitar
Runningtime	52 Min.	Danilo Bar	Guitar
Label	Frontiers Records	Fabio Pozzato	Bass
Release	09 Sep. 2002	Alex Mantiero	Drums
Country	Italy	-	Keyboards
Similar artists	---

The Dark Age is Italian White Skull's fifth full-length studio-release and also the first one with the new vocalist Gus Gabarró. Once again we're dealing with a concept album that concerns the Spanish Inquisition during the Middle Age. This I knew beforehand and since White Skull are one of personal favourites my expectations were very high, despite the fact that Frederica Sister had left the band.

However, I must say that I am a bit disappointed here. It's not the absence of Frederica that's bothering me but also that White Skull nowadays doesn't sound at all like before. Although changes aren't necessarily a bad but in this case I'm afraid they are. The vocalist isn't as good, the former great intros and often two-part choruses with the first part slow are not there anymore and the production is also a bit worse than before.
However, there are some good aspects as well.

The overall sound of the album is a very dark and gloomy one and combined with Gus' harsch and raw voice and some good keyboards in many intros still make The Dark Age a good metal-album.

But considering the band's previous releases and their standards I had expected way more. Should this be the debut album of some other band I might have considered giving a higher grade. It's still good melodic power metal but no more. But since this is just the first album with the new constellation, I'm as good as certain that this was just a temporarily adversity.

Production	Vocals	Compositions
7	7	7

Summary
7 chalices of 10 - Mat