Silent Winter: Empire of Sins

Enthusiastic Greek Power Metallers Silent Winter bring forth their persuasive and driving sophomore album Empire of Sins, only just two years after their well-received debut record The Circles of Hell with a new bassist Vaggellis Tsekouras taking over the helm from the former four string man George Loukakis.

Nine ambitiously power sliding tracks for this contemporary offering forwarded as a total constitution, Silent Winter end up sticking to their guns and they try staying safe in the process with the usually formatted generic style of Power Metal, without doing anything that can appear to be a breath of freshness or leaving any surprising factors.

Blazing through as the superiorly highlighting episodes embedded in the mixture, the excellent 'Dragons Dance' becomes a high point of interest with its Stratovarius influenced feel and its take on the European Power Metal trait with a sublime proportion filled with the fiery passions of glory, power and strength to win over the crowd and take the crown.

However, this cannot be consistently said for some of the other elements lodged inside the tough walls of Empire of Sins as a lot of material appears to be inputted unconvincingly in places and it noticeably falls short of the mark; especially witnessed through the distributing segments placed on the most Progressive entry of this fabrication 'Where the River Flows', where the vocals just get annoyingly painful to bear in places from the confidently soaring front man Mike Livas (Timo Tolkki, Zix).

Other honourable mentions drive forward in the names of the epically arranged structural pathways of the title track 'Empire of Sins' and the catchy wavelengths spread through the Judas Priest infused riffing of the true ambition packaged in the fury raging 'Hunter's Oath', honestly portraying Silent Winter in a much better light musically and relentlessly showing off what the elite are capable of when they up their game to really hit the right spots.

All-inclusively, a solid effort as a whole unity but not a magnificent one to say the least and the notably cool cover of Belinda Carlisle's 'Leave a Light on For Me' adds a nice touch to the bigger bulk of things to throw in a bit of cheese laden melody into the barrel.

Although in truth, I was expecting more from the essence of this listening experience and a more impressive outing on paper. However, I am confidently sure that the energetic Greek Warriors will be back with a storm for a more triumphant affair packaged with more of a splendour effect next time around and then the determined quintet will hopefully not stay so much I the safe zone and end up playing it by the old book for it not to turn out in the vein of the same old same old category of the Melodic Power Metal genre and division.

Track list:
1. Gates of Fire
2. Wings of Destiny
3. Shout
4. Mirror
5. Hunter's Oath
6. When the River Flows
7. Dragons Dance
8. Empire of Sins
9. Leave the Light on For Me (Belinda Carlisle Cover)

Added: April 11th 2021
Reviewer: James Mannion
Score:
Related Link: Band Facebook Page
Hits: 790
Language: english

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