White Skull - The XIII Skull

*=Staff's pick	Space Invaders (Intro) The Union Top Secret Last Navigator The Skulls Missing Link Creature Of The Abyss Power Of Blood Perfect Design* The Observers Mothman Prophecies I Wanna Fly Away

Genre	Heavy Metal	Gustavo Gabarrò	Vocals
Tracks	12	Tony "Mad" Fontò	Guitar
Runningtime	59 Min.	Danilo Bar	Guitar
Label	Frontiers Records	-	Bass
Release	03 May 2004	Alex Mantiero	Drums
Country	Italy	-	Keyboards
Similar artists	---

White Skull from Italy have been around since the beginning of the 90's, and recorded their first self-titled demotape in 1991. After the release of a few questionable albums and MCD's, they found their nisch and started playing power metal based on great riffs spiced with original vocals in form of Federica De Boni, and I really liked their albums Tales From The North (1999) and Public Glory, Secret Agony (2000). The previous album The Dark Age (2002) marked the beginning of a slight decrease as they lost a bit of their pondus - the material was not as solid anymore, and the change of vocals was not entirely to their benefit.

What they try to accomplish here, or what road they are trying to take with this, I am not sure about. They have lost basically all of their personality and the significant touch that previously made them stand out a bit and catch my interest, and now it sounds unstructured and confused. More or less standard second class metal in the gray zone between is what we get, and the good riffs are gone and are being replaced by highly mediocre stuff. Development and change are honorable elements in a bands career, but it has to be in the right way. I feel that Perfect Design and Mothman Prophecies are the only two listenable songs on the album, and those are closest to what they have previously released, so in my eyes that shows that they are on the wrong track with the new material.

The album starts with a typical example of this behaviour with The Union, and the chorus in the following Top Secret sounds like something that could belong on one of the X-mas Project albums or fit on a childrens lullaby cd. It is weird and does not really fit. Not until the third song we get to hear something that sounds interesting, as the main riff is good, but it is completely destroyed by a lousy chorus. The choruses are actually what get the lowest grade from me on this album. I don't know how is responsible for the melodylines, but it ain't good. The only, and I mean only, exception is Perfect Design, with its Helloween-ish guitar lead as a start and a refrain which could have been picked from somewhere around the Master Of The Rings or Time Of The Oath era.

Further on into the album there are some great riffs and good solos and leads spread out here and there, but the vocal effort by Gabarrò is awful and no energy seems to have been put into actually structuring the songs. Some good riffs as a base is far from enough if you don't have the topping for it to make the whole picture appealing. It sounds like a desperate try to get something out that is not even half ready, but they take the chance since they have some good riffs. Making a 3 track EP out of the best parts of this could be a good idea, and would probably result in a nice effort, since the material is not strong enough for more than that.

This does not hold even half way, I am afraid. As you may have noticed, there is only one Staff's Pick for this album, and that was added under hesitation - draw your own conclusions from that.

Production	Vocals	Compositions
4	5	2

Summary
2 chalices of 10 - Tommy