Firewind
Few Against Many

I actually hate this kind of albums. The kind of albums where the best song starts the album and I hate this kind of albums because the only thing that happens after the first song is over is that you're waiting for another song that's as good as the first… and as time goes your disappointment grows.

Firewind is a band consisting of more and less known greeks which all have gathered a few years of experience in playing metal by now. The band was started back in 1998 and released their debut about ten years ago. The guy who started the band was Kostas Karamitroudis, or Gus G as he's more known by, and he's probably the most famous of the guys in the band after playing with Dream Evil, Nightrage, Mystic Prophecy and lately also Ozzy Osbourne. Despite Gus busy schedule he and Firewind has managed to make their seventh album with 'Few Against Many' and all of their albums so far has had a pretty high standard, and 'Few Against Many' is no exception.

Most of the tracks and most of the things the band does all sound good on this album with heavy, well played guitars, nicely sung vocals and a good rhythmic section. The only thing you might have an issue with on the instrumental part is the keyboards, which are hardly hearable. I've listen carefully plenty of times and except for the intro to opening Wall Of Sound and the pionos in Edge Of A Dream, which also have a guest appearance by Apocalyptica, I can barely hear it. These are also the clearly best two songs on the album as well - an energetic start and a beautiful slow one.

I've listened to power metal in all my hard rocking life and I've heard Firewind quite a lot. In my opinion they've never been better than on 'Few Against Many' and it is an album that has potential to challenge way up in the field of great power metal albums. However, there are a few things bothering me that might put an end to that challenge. For starters we have the production and how it's managed to mix away the vocals of Apollo Papathanasios in a few of the songs. And then we have the bass guitars, which sounds extremely annoying in a few of the songs and the annoyance peaks in the penultimate Long Gone Tomorrow. And then of course the smart move of putting Wall Of Sound first because as I said, the rest of the album is good but as they've set the bar so high, you don't really appreciate them. Wall Of Sound though, what a great song! It ticks all the boxes for what you want to hear from a power metal song. Too band nothing else is really close. Sure, we've already mentioned Edge Of A Dream but that's a nicely played ballad and not to compare with Wall Of Sound, but there are a few good ones in such as the title track, Glorious and Destiny but not really in the same league. So, after the first song you might as well turn the album off, not because of lack of other good songs but because they're not good enough compared to Wall of Sound.

So what to make out of 'few Against Many'? There's a lot of positives but also a few negatives that somewhat ruins the overall impression. Hadn't it been for those it would easily been the best power metal album of the year but now… well, it's one of the best but I can't help feeling it's somewhat of a disappointment. I'm not saying it's bad but clearly it was so close to being so good! But it ends up being "just" a low five point score and if you like power metal it's a definite buy! If you don't I doubt you'll find this album too interesting. However, you ought to check out Edge Of A Dream and Wall Of Sound at least.

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