Valor
The Yonder Answer

This band has the valour to make exciting music about knights in shining armours, about bravery and things in the wild green yonder. They are from Greece and they have a great looking cover artwork which along with their logo also unfortunately would put me off looking at them unless I had to review them, which I have to do. This is because albums that look like this and also has similar song titles as this album usually sounds quite similar in a sort of standardised epic power metal that hardly differs between the bands performing it. Of course there are exceptions and I never judge anything by its cover as that would be wrong and not really giving the band the chance they deserve. So what can we then say about the band Valor? They were founded in the early part of the 2000s and has released one full length album before this one so The Yonder Answer is the band’s second full length album.

It is one that sounds just like you would imagine from looking at the album cover, epically styled power metal with the choirs and the classical undertones and all of those are there. It all starts with the obligatory intro and then the obligatory and quite ordinarily styled power metal songs. The singer has a typical power metal style and the production is quite standard for the format today, no real surprises anywhere when looking at their production side and it is the same with the songs which all conforms to the standard of heavy metal set at a some power metal bible meeting somewhere, probably in Italy.

The quality is quite alright all the way through in that all the songs are good and none is bad. But then we start to find ourself in familiar territory with this kind of music, I think it is music by déjà vu rather than anything else because there isn’t much, if anything, that can be said to be something that sounds like it came from these guys and not from someone else. It is music tailored to sound a certain established way, nothing new and nothing exciting. I would not call it bad though, because it isn’t and it is music that I or, I believe, anyone else can listen to and enjoy it while listening. But looking at it from another standpoint, the one of if you should buy it or a musical reviewing from all aspects viewpoint, it looks a bit less amusing I would say. This because there is just too much sounding like it out there already and one more decent album in that genre just dilutes the genre even more, maybe it is great if you collect power metal or if you really like the genre without reservation.

That makes me conclude that this is not the most exciting or interesting album I have ever heard and it is a fairly typical power metal album both in style and in quality, quite good but not really that interesting to anyone who has already heard five million of those. So, Valor has some things going for them but at the same time they have a way to go because the answer about how to make something great is still in the yonder for them.

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