The Storyteller
Dark Legacy

Last February we had a video special about Swedish metal and in that we had a video wirh The Storyteller where I also mentioned that the band just had reunited. About a year later we got this first album after the hiatus that had lasted since 2006 and the first album since 2006, the fifth album with the band.

Now I was never a big Storyteller fan when they first presented themselves. Their music always felt like a worse version of the kind of music that was very popular back then, probably the most popular kind of hard rock in the late 90's and early 00's (at least in Europe). When The Storyteller now returns they face a completely different scene - gone are the demands for power metal and hence they can't ride the wave of its popularity and I guess this will be the real test for their music. At first I thought this album sounded more or less exactly the way it used do before their hiatus, like their time apart hadn't changed them a bit. And that kind of made me disappointed - that they hadn't taken advantage of what they'd learned and experienced during those seven years...

The reason why I got disappointed was that I had some hopes for this album. I had hoped for some reflections and new perspectives but here they are again, like no time had passed at all. So I continued to listen, and listen and listen to this album, giving them chance after chance to prove they had made some sort of growth as a band. A thing that strikes me as I listen to this is how much it reminds me of Steel Attack in the days with Ronny Hemlin. And then I discovered, as I looked through the album information, that Ronny Hemlin has actually helped Storyteller with the recording of this album. 'Dark Legacy' has the same kind of mid-tempo fixation as Steel Attack had with Hemlin and the melodies tend to get stuck in a sort of monotonous grinding instead of inspirational conducting. And despite that the album has its highs and songs that are pretty good, my memory of it tends to get stuck in this feeling.

Release me opens the album and that's probably the most up-tempo song on the album. The drums clatter like corn popping in to popcorn inside a saucepan after reaching the perfect temperature. The guitars fumes like the oil in that same saucepan had you forgotten the corns. Release Me is followed by Strength Of Valhalla that also begins quite brisk and hence 'Dark Legacy' begins pretty good. Together with the title track that follows, I think this is the best part of 'Dark Legacy' and as long as they maintains this lively tempo and spirited attitude with choirs in the chorus and without haltering the tempo then I feel Storyteller has taken a step forward as a band and their journey towards Valhalla really looks like a successful one. In my opinion, these are among the best songs Storyteller has done so far.

But the decay begins at the fourth song. They might have reached Gimlé and was half way through to the promised land of Asgard but by the strong gaze of Odin they seems to tremble. I'm not saying they end up in Nifelheim but as Uninvited Guest stars with a significant lower tempo but it definitely lowers the mood and I think what has most negative impact on me is that dark guitar sound they've looped all the way through the song. Forever they Shall Kneel feels like an attempt to regain some tempo but it ends up feeling like another mid-tempo grinder despite having a decent chorus, which is due to the boring verses. God Of Gods starts with the sounds of ravens and since it's a song about Odin it's most certaintly Huginn and Muninn that's shouting. I like what they do with the guitars here but once again they ruin the song in the verses where they return to the grinding and this makes this song a real low-mark as the choruses are worse than in Forever They Shall Kneel.

The second half of 'Dark Legacy' has pretty much the same story as the first. It starts off pretty decent at track seven with a decent track and then Break The Bounds comes two tracks later and that's one of the top three songs of the album, in the same vein as track two and three. This seems to be the way of doing things for Storyteller because compared to the other tracks where they tend to get stuck in endless mid-tempo grinding they are actually quite good. Or like Sands Of Time that close the album, which is a sort of ballad that so obviously tries to be grand and epic but since they haven't paid attention to the details it fails quite badly loosing points in both production, vocals and the sound.

Overall, I don't think this album is a failure in any kind of way. It's not a parody or disaster or even disapproved. But the Swedes have a whole lot of details they need to polish and to really get that bite they really aught to lose some of that mid-tempo grinding they tend to get stuck in on this album. The fans of Storyteller probably wont mind the grinding, nor the shortcomings in the details and I guess the fans of Sabaton and their 'Caorlus Rex' will love this too because it's not too far from their fellow swedes. But to people that prefer power metal the Helloween kind of way, or not power metal at all, I'd probably play it through once or twice before buying it. It's an OK album, but it's not a sure thing.

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