Valor
Arrogance: The Fall

With a name like valor, valour in real English, you should expect a band with the valour and daring to do the unexpected, a band who dare to travel paths untraveled by most, a band who navigates the dangerous streams, who has the valour to risk alienating fans and follow what they really want to do. This Greek band calling themselves Valor does not adhere to my thoughts about valour and have probably put together one of the most cowardly album I have heard in all my time reviewing music. They gallop down the most threaded paths of the epic heavy/power metal world and staple clichés one another in a pile so high that even the most seasoned reviewer finds it difficult to put fingers to keys and jot down words on the digital paper on the high resolution screen. It is not the most impressive album I have ever received and it is certainly far from the most exciting.

The label describes their music as “unique epic compositions and superb performances filled with melody and passion and of course pure epic heaviness!” And the label also claim that their previous album The Yonder Answer received nothing but praise, I am not sure I praised that album and I am certainly not going to praise this one. It is an album that has a rather typical sound, the vocalist is typical of the genre, the galloping rhythms, and everything else sounds fairly typical and unique is hardly a word I would use to describe this album. I think I would use the word generic, generic and uninspiring are word I would use when describing what this Greek sextet has to offer with their newest album – their third album.

I am not impressed with what I hear and I highly doubt that anyone but their fans would find much to enjoy in this album. Not that the album is bad in any way, it is just not particularly good. It may not be that it is arrogance that is their fall but wouldn’t you say that it is somewhat arrogant to think that you could make something relevant just by copying what others have done before you many times? I would think so, and perhaps this album is best described as quite irrelevant and quite generic. What if they had the valour to think just a little outside the box? With this album I actually think they have galloped a step or three backwards and gone from doing something quite generic to doing something completely uninteresting, their previous album had some redeeming features – this has none.

In the end I think Valor makes a rather dull album, not bad but it is not a very interesting album. All ten songs are a bit boring and playing through them feels like a waste of 43 minutes that could be used for something better. Every time I play this album I just feel like I want to play something else and I feel that Valor needs to find a better path to travel unless they want to remain a footnote in some insignificant musical volume somewhere. This is an easily dismissible album unless you are a fan of Valor – lets just say that they need a lot more Valour.

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