With little doubt, Illinois band Inner Siege wears their influences on their sleeves. They look to fellow metal peers Firewind, Kamelot, Dream Evil and Iron Maiden for their style. You'll certainly hear the European power metal flavor from this American melodic heavy/power metal band on their debut album Kingdom of Shadows.
This album has all the proper elements to make the grade, not the least of which is some first class musicianship and songwriting. But they also have some quality production and mixing by Fredrik Nordstrom (Dream Evil, In Flames, Opeth, et al) behind the knobs. With these strong elements, it's easy to say that Kingdom of Shadows is a great sounding album with some terrific heavy metal songs.
Hitting some highlights, the listener should heed the great twin lead guitar work of Kevin Grose and J.L. Prater. It's all solid classic metal guitar with the solos on Ultimate Sacrifice, Children of Winter, and Warrior some of the best here. Another strength of Inner Siege is vocalist Jeremy Ray: a pure melodic metal vocalist with great power and range, and maybe a hint of Dickinson in his timbre. There's also some serious lyrical strength here as well. Abuser deals with the ugliness of sexual abuse. But there's also some spiritual, even Christian themes, in songs like Warrior and Ultimate Sacrifice. The latter songs seems to juxtapose the sacrifices of our soldiers since 9/11 with the single sacrifice of Christ for all, a very nice touch.
By way of conclusion, Inner Siege's Kingdom of Shadows is an exceptionally strong debut of American melodic heavy power metal from this talented band. If they're gunning for the European theater as well, I'd say our friends across the Atlantic better duck and cover, as these guys are quite good. Inner Siege's Kingdom of Shadows is strongly recommended.
01. Warrior 4:02
02. Fight On 5:14
03. Dragon Rider 4:37
04. Children of Winter 5:09
05. Control 5:55
06. Abuser 4:45
07. Excuses 4:48
08. Free 4:54
09. What Kind of Love 1:53
10. Ultimate Sacrifice 6:20
Inner Siege – Kingdom of Shadows (2012)
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