Saidian - For Those Who Walk The Path Forlorn

*=Staff's pick	The Path Forlorn* Burn Down The Night* Lonely Nights Silent Killer Heart Of Stone* Cry In The Rain Chains Of Time The Only One Raging Fire*

Genre	Heavy/Power Metal	Markus Engelfried	Vocals
Tracks	9	Rodrigo Blattert	Guitar
Runningtime	43 Min.	-	Guitar
Label	AOR Heaven	Manuel Glassmann	Bass
Release	27 July 2005	Stefan Dittrich	Drums
Country	Germany	Markus Bohr	Keyboards
Similar artists	Edguy, Royal Hunt

Originally the band went under the name Aria for a short period but with a complete line-up this German five-piece renamed it to Saidian and this is their first studio effort, For Those Who Walk the Path Forlorn. Founded by keyboard player Markus Bohr they've been around since 2004 and usually when the keys-man is the front figure it has a tendency to reflect in the music and Saidian also walks that same old and beaten road. That instrument clearly dominates the sound frame and those of you who have difficulties dealing with blacks and ivories should probably stop reading and instead pay attention to other releases. Those of you still not intimidated can be told that Saidian mostly sound like a mix between mainly Edguy and Royal Hunt with sprinkles of Ivory Tower and also Stratovarius to some extent however in much smaller portions than the others. Vocalist Markus Engelfried has surprising likenesses to Tobias Sammeth and the keyboard playing by Bohr are not that far away from his Royal Hunt corresponding musician, André Andersen.

That said about the sound-comparisons, Saidian are basing their songs on an unmistakable guitar/keyboard interaction so common for this genre type and they also bring in rhythmic verses and create catchy and sing-along friendly choruses with a huge portion of backing vocals. This is an undertaking I think they accomplish quite well and the neo-classic inputs located on especially Burn Down the Night, Heart of Stone and Chains of Time also goes well with their chosen style. The songs vary between up-tempo power metal numbers and more melodic rockers and overall this mix works quite fine and gives an album with a good fluctuated repertoire. The faster numbers Burn Down the Night and Raging Fire feel very Edguy-ish and so do Silent Killer and Heart of Stone as well, and not only for the vocal similarities, but also for the general track layout. Melodic hard rock oriented pieces like Lonely Nights, Silent Killer and Chains of Time brings variety and show that the band are capable of handling quite an array of different colours in the song composition spectra.

The band really consists of good talented musicians that master their craft splendidly, that definitely has to be stated, but when it comes to the vocalist some weaknesses are spotted. Overall he's doing a fairly great job but he has a tendency to put the wrong tone to the wrong place when going too high on the scale. Composition-wise there's nothing really wide of the mark but I honestly miss some real stand out killer tracks that are needed to lift an album over the boundaries of something better than just good. The release is by no means anything else but very genuine and solid but it doesn't provide anything remarkably exceptional and don't really stand out much from other beasts in the metal jungle. Otherwise there are really few major faults to come down on regarding the professional level and the vocal flaws are compensated by the high quality of the music and the talent of the other individual band members. The production by former Sanvoisen vocalist Vangelis Maranis is very good and for those of you familiar with that band there are big possibilities that you can recognize a little touch of that in the guitar sound and the overall depiction.

Aficionados of strings and ivories and of course of Edguy and Royal Hunt have quite some listening friendly material to dig into here and For Those Who Walk the Path Forlorn is virtually an album that as a debut must be regarded as a good release and a promising start. But without a satisfactory number of real mind-blowing inputs the whole issue has to settle for being something in the terms of "only" good and acceptable. I'm sure much more and better bits and pieces of metal will come from these guys further on, but as a whole I still must regard this as a release with a temperature a few degrees hotter than lukewarm.