Why bother baking that wheel of Brie or Camembert? This power metal spectacular is all the cheese you will need.
It’s so easy to put that cheese factor to power metal these days. Let’s face it though, it sort of invites us to do it. While Twilight Force could easily serve as a thickening agent for a certain Kraft Macaroni product, they actually have produced fine power metal in their short, two album existence. When they exploded on to the scene in 2014, you came to see some elves dance around on stage, but actually stayed because they backed up their sword-swinging with the finest symphonic power metal since Rhapsody.
The sophomore effort ‘Heroes of Mighty Magic’ reaffirmed the fact that the band are very serious in competing against the very best in the business despite their light-hearted fantasy themes. The album was simply excellent – a solid theatrical epic from start to finish, one we knew would be hard to follow up.
With their previous vocalist departing in such a critical juncture for the band, it was hard to see how Twilight Force were going to manage to continue their meteoric rise into the front pages of the power metal bible, but wizards and magic overcome…’Dawn of the Dragonstar’ is yet another finely crafted opus.
With the enlistment of Luca Turilli’s Rhapsody vocalist Alessandro Conti, or now knighted Allyon, the band were able to turn a veteran of symphonic metal to fine tune and diversify an already brilliant musical journey. While it’s not anything better or worse than it’s predecessors, ‘Dawn of the Dragonstar’ is indefinitely a worthy addition to the Twilight Force saga adding just a bit of experimentation with Japanese and Egyptian melodies to keep it all interesting.
Tracks such as ‘Thundersword’ provide that operatic punch to get you sucked into the journey that clearly had some concept involved into it, you’ll just need to listen to it a few more times to learn just what mighty magic adventure out Twilight Bard’s are trying to relay to is.
It’s hard not to get involved with bombastic power metal singalongs such as ‘Long Live the King’ and ‘Hydra’, keeping your interesting flowing with flailing guitar work, epic choruses and folky symphonies to transport you to lands far away.
If you’ve managed to sit through any high fantasy series or movie, there’s no excuse not to enjoy Twilight Force’s fine brand of symphonic power metal here, as ‘Dawn of the Dragonstar’ simply continues what they do best. Even if you want to make fun of it, you know you will love it really.
Rating: 4/5
