Heavenly - Sign Of The Winner

*=Staff's pick	Break the Silence Destiny* Sign of the Winner* The World will be Better* Condemned to Die* The Angel Still Believe The Sandman Words of Change Until the End*

Genre	Power Metal	Ben Sotto	Vocals
Tracks	10	Fred Leclercq	Guitar
Runningtime	54 Min.	-	Guitar
Label	Noise Records	Pe Pelisson	Bass
Release	04 Oct. 2001	Maxence Pilo	Drums
Country	France	-	Keyboards
Similar artists	Helloween, Gamma Ray, Stratovarius, Sonata Arctica

Heavenly of the land of France is back with the successor to their first full-length release Coming From The Sky. That this band should be something out of the ordinary became very clear already on that album with metal-gurus like Piet Sielck and Kai Hansen involved in the project. This time Heavenly stand on their own but that has only improved things even further. I have nothing to say about the production and sound because they're as irreproachable as they can possibly get.

I must confess that I am of the opinion that the first four tracks of this album are somewhat out of this world. Here Ben Sotto really proves what a very talented songwriter and composer he is. The intro Break the Silence is one of the longest intros (4 min) but what a way to begin an album. The following one, Destiny is a six-minutes killer with an outstanding intro and a real sing-along chorus.

The title track is even better with one of the most melodic and awesome intros of all time and the same goes for the verse and the chorus. This is taken even one step further on the next track, The World will be Better that blows away all earlier comments. After this enormous 4-track starter I had to take a pause to relax and wipe the grin of my face and I even think I passed out for a while. When I came back to my senses I found two more songs to mention. These are Condemned to Die and the finale, the nine minute Until the End.

As you might have guessed I have a great love for Heavenly's Sign of a Winner. This is metal as it's supposed to be in its finest hours. Fast, energic, very melodic, great vocals, outstanding guitar riffs and choruses that blow your head off in a heartbeat. This is truly awesome and could best be described simply as just heavenly. Heavenly already is a true contender for the power metal throne and if these Frenchmen keep up their development I don't know what will stop them. If you know that you're a big metal freak and just love Gamma Ray, Helloween and such bands and still haven't heard Heavenly, then I'm very sorry for your loss.

For you who have- congratulations, that's really a sign of a winner!

See also review of: Carpe Diem , Virus , Dust To Dust

Production	Vocals	Compositions
9	8,5	9,5

Summary
9 chalices of 10 - Mat