Voice
The Storm

German Voice has been silent for over a decade now, their fans have been waiting for quite a while for a sound from that voice. Now they get their wish as the band has now rebanded and put together an album called The Storm, an album I have been listening for a while now. And as I don’t know the band’s earlier work I cannot really comment on whether or not it was worth the wait, but this album offers twelve tracks and almost one hour of music. It was mastered by master masterer Mika Jussila in the classic Finnvox Studios, that should at least be a guarantee for a good sound – the question if the band has the quality and song-writing ability to go along with the mastering then arises.

The sound is pretty good on this album, powerful and heavy power metal that can be compared with the likes of Manowar, Grave Digger or Rage to name a few. They offer heaviness but also with a decent melodic sense and perhaps some progressive touches. The press sheet claims that it is quite varied, I am not really so sure about that as I would describe this as a stylistically rather stale or static album. And stylistically I wouldn’t say that it offers anything particularly exciting or fresh, the vocals aren’t that great either, perhaps not a weakness but not great either. Close to an hour of playing time is a long playing time when an album isn’t very varied and this isn’t a very varied album.

So it isn’t exactly the most exciting album I have heard in my life, in fact I would call it rather mediocre. Sure it isn’t bad, it doesn’t induce vomiting and that sort of thing, it just isn’t a very exciting album. The production is decent but they don’t have any ear-catching songs and when I listen to this album I find that it offers nothing really memorable. I highly doubt it was worth the wait, and why even have the band get together again for this album? But sure, fans of the heavy/power metal would probably find this album rather agreeable and perhaps even good, and perhaps it would be worth checking out if you like the similar bands.

Personally I find this album most uninteresting and in my view it would have been best if the voice had remained silent for a lot longer. It is a middle-of-the-road album that fails to impress me and never really catches my attention. Decent heavy/power metal but it is as memorable as a beige Volvo, no matter how much I play this album I remain unimpressed.

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