Kenneth W. (Eyesore) from TAUNTON, MA
Reviewed on 12/4/2007...
Recently I picked up a CD by a band called Isengard. The album cover featured a massive stone structure with some people standing in front of its portcullis. The back of the CD showed a fierce-looking dragon, all scales, boney spikes and jagged teeth. The album was in the bargain bin for $2 and I picked it up thinking I was going to hear some obscure metal band paying homage to all things Tolkein. What I heard was some horrendous bluesy rock band playing some of the worst songs I've ever heard in my entire life. What kind of trickery is this? You're supposed to be a power metal band! I thought. Arwen, on the other hand, don't fuck with the formula! They keep it real! This is what you would expect: power metal at its symphonic finest.
Arwen are clearly more interested in making great music than they are with royalty payments. With eight band members and no Slipknot-like gimmick I doubt they're riding the money-wagon to the bank. What we essentially have is a great power metal band with male and female vocalists, both of whom sing and opt not to include the standard guttural male vocals. Accompanying them we have a double-dose of guitar and killer lead work, two keyboardists adding that big symphonic sound similar to Rhapsody, and a solid foundation of bass and drums.
The album features thirteen songs (one being an intro) ranging from the typical fast-paced power metal on songs like "Illusions" and "Fantasy and Reality" to a mid-paced almost rock sound on "By My Own Sight" to the slow power ballad touches of "Lullaby." Oftentimes I'm reminded of Helloween while listening to this CD, if they only had a male and female singer. The choruses are big and catchy with that group vocal approach we hear on a lot of these types of albums. The songs average five minutes long and never get tiresome. The structuring is the rather typical verse-chorus-verse-chorus-solo-chorus-chorus stuff, but in the end the songs are strong enough to not even give that a second thought. And again, does that even matter? The song is what's important, right? And there are good, quality songs aplenty here! And though the band is named after a character in the Lord Of The Rings novel, they aren't a band -- as far as I can tell -- who write solely on the topic of Middle-Earth, like Finland's Battlelore. And that eliminates the cheese factor, which is fortunate, for the band features two members named "Nacho."
Website: http://www.arwenmetal.com
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/arwenmetal
Track Listings (14) - Disc #1