Review by UnhinderedbyTalent for Ancient Empire - Wings of the Fallen (2019)
Most of my problems with power metal are already well documented on the site. My search for bands that have the punch to back up the genre tag recently threw up a rare “hit” in Ancient Empire. Completely unfamiliar with their work I took a punt on the random suggestion that popped up on my stream service and have spent the past couple of weeks returning to their fifth full-length as I ponder if they are one of the gifted few who can satisfy my requirement for real power in the power metal they play.
The answer is “yes”, and also “no” if I am honest. Acknowledging the fact that they are an established artist of some ten years, the band have clearly developed their sound to a reasonably accomplished level. They can most certainly play their instruments and I would go as far as to say that the guitar work is good without straying into the realm of exceptional. If the band were a finger buffet, I would want more of the guitar on my plate than I would the vocals in all honesty. Whilst not awful, the vocals suffer from the ailment that afflicts many power metal artists that I hear, they are just not consistent enough and the limits of the vocalist’s range are obvious. They are never painfully obvious though and the rest of the action is more than enough to distract me from them in the main.
Where the album also suffers is a lack of quality to some of the song writing. Structures feel like they bulge or extend unnecessarily, like they are being forced to fit around clunky lyrical arrangements where the whole vocal passage would fail to be delivered otherwise. As a result of this I get a sense that the band are constantly chasing the flow as opposed to driving it themselves. I would not say they ever find themselves out of control, but with the available ability in the musicianship I would say that the song writing does not showcase this talent as best it could.
Grateful though I am that the album does not seep itself in keyboards, the mix does not do the drums any justice at all and as a result there feels like a layer of the sound is missing to some degree. The bass is barely audible, and the album relies far too heavily on the guitar attack to carry the load and as far as I can tell there is only one of them being used (maybe layered) so it is a tall order.
All the above withstanding, Wings of the Fallen more than has its moments and can unleash some real solid heavy metal laden power metal when the band puts their minds to it. Arguably, the song quality improves track by track as they build up some confidence and with a better mix and maybe more studio members (vocalist Joe Liszt also does guitar and bass on the album) then the rating for this album would be higher.
In the grander scheme of things, Wings of the Fallen succeeds in capturing my interest enough for it to be kept on rotation and for inclusion into my stream library which is not something that I can say for 90% of the power metal that I have heard. Small victory it may be, but every little helps.