Manticora - 8 Deadly Sins

*=Staff's pick	If? King Of The Absurd Playing God* Melancholic* Creator Of Failure It Feels Like The End* Enigma Fall From Grace Help Me Like No One Can* If, Then

Genre	Power Metal	Lars F. Larsen	Vocals
Tracks	10	Kristian Larsen	Guitar
Runningtime	55 Min.	Martin Arendal	Guitar
Label	Massacre	Kasper Gram	Bass
Release	25 Oct. 2004	Mads Volf	Drums
Country	Denmark	Finn Zierler	Keyboards
Similar artists	Mercenary, Blind Guardian

Manticora is a Danish band with a strange approach to the seven deadly sins: they have eight, these cunning guys. Instead of the traditionally seven, Manticora serves us eight different ones which the album is based upon. So apart from the intro and the outro, there are eight tracks with a theme that is full of sin, all backed up with metal that stretches widely and the influences seem to be just as many as their sins, and of course there is some hard music to go along with our human weaknesses.

The sinning starts with an attempt to produce an epic feeling as the music swings between battering thrash and calmer, emotional parts, resembling Borknagar when they are doing the same, and slower, things. And this is a taste of how much of the album sounds like. Manticora is mixing trash and driving hard edge power metal with calmer moments, while combining it with slightly progressive parts. When they go for the full throttle and deliver faster and thrashier parts, I am loving it completely, especially when they make superb riffing filled with leads and harmonies of the best quality. They go for the epic touch in many of the refrains, and that don't work all the time, as it tends to loose flow when the music is made slower. But with the track Melancholic it does works splendidly, as it lifts the music to a level a bit higher than the level it holds most of the time.

The guest appearance from Finn Zierler on keyboards (Beyond Twilight), fills Manticora with another dimension to their music, producing musical landscapes that lifts the otherwise dry music at many times. And some of the leads from Finn are definitely top of the line, and once again the track Melancholic is a good example of when Manticora makes quality metal. It is when the music goes down in tempo and they go for the slower epic touch I am lost, and when I begin to wait for the faster parts to come around for another turn.

Basically this sounds like fellow Danish band Mercenary but without the growls, so naturally they are the closest comparison with Manticora, but also bands like Pathos, Evergrey, Borknagar and even Iron Maiden come to mind. And not to forget, Blind Guardian, and at times much of them. There are middle period fast and aggressive Blind Guardian to be found at some places, for example with the track Help Me Like No One Can. And if you think Tales From A Twilight World and Somewhere For Beyond, you get some of the picture. In the track It Feels Like The End you get an even more serious Blind Guardian vibe with the choir that fills the chorus.

So you can see that it is hard to really categorise this band, as they have a wide range to their music, but somehow they manage to keep it together. One minus, though - as their music stretches widely in range, their vocalist does not. He has a good enough voice to not destroy anything, but it is limited in range and power. The vocals reminds me much of Hansi from Blind Guardian and Andreas "Vintersorg" Hedlund when he's not growling, but Lars F. Larsen has limitations to his voice that the other guys haven't. And even if he can sing decently, I would like to have a bit more power and range in order to prevent his voice from coming out as monotone as it tends to do.

Production	Vocals	Compositions
6	4	6

Summary
5 chalices of 10 - Thomas