Warmen - Beyond Abilities

*=Staff's pick	Beyond Abilities* Spark* Hidden* Trip To...* Dawn Singer's Chance Alone Confessions Salieri Strikes Back* War of Worlds Finale

Genre	Heavy Metal	-	Vocals
Tracks	11	Pekka Palmu	Guitar
Runningtime	51 Min.	Antti Wirman	Guitar
Label	Spinefarm Records	-	Bass
Release	05 Feb.2002	-	Drums
Country	Finland	Janne Warman	Keyboards
Similar artists	Stratovarius

When not playing in the band Children of Bodom, the keyboardist Janne Wirman is busy elsewhere. This is a sideproject he has on the side, and they have released one more album before this. Now he is back with a fresh album, which I must is a really good one, but others might not be of the same opinion, because there are mostly instrumental tracks on this album. This band consists of only 3 members, but a lot more guestperformers instead.
Warmen has engaged a couple of the more wellknown singers and instrumetalists in the finnish scene for this release, as well as the previous.

The album has a very strong opening, beginning with the killer instumental titel track, followed by the catchy Spark, and Hidden with Kimberly Goss from Sinergy on vocals doing a great job. It continues with another fast-paced killer instrumental named Trip To...and we get to hear good keyboard/guitar duels in a good tempo. We get to hear Kimberly Goss more times on this album - on the track Alone she does another guestapppearance with the honours. Even though the track has somewhat of a European Song Contest feeling over it, you can't help to like it. :)

After the pretty meaningless narrative song Confessions we are once again to hear an instrumental track- Salieri Strikes Back. This is another really good track showing the musical capacity of the members. There are a lot of classical undertones overall on this album, with great emphasis on the keyboards. The closure of the album is as strong as the beginning - above mentioned S.S.B, War of Worlds and Finale are all instrumental tracks that are of very high quality.

This never reach the heights of Children of Bodom, because the lack of those little extra guitarsolos and harmonies, but it's a fully acceptable metalalbum, even though you have to be prepared to put in some effort in getting a hold of it due to the original (but not innovative) approach of keyboardbased metal without many vocals. If you are a fan of the finnish melodic music a' la Stratovarious, Sinergy and their likes - then this is definitly an album to check out while waiting for the big boys to release a new album.