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Artist: Cain's Offering |
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Each month of this year there has been some tremendous albums, as each month album after album surpasses the last, in amongst August releases comes one of the best Power Metal albums I’ve heard in years, and the band responsible for that album are Cain’s Offering. Who? I hear you ask, who exactly, well the band are the brainchild of former Sonata Arctica guitarist Jani Liimatainen. Joining
Liimatainen in this venture are keyboardist
Mikko Harkin (Solution.45, Mehida, ex-Sonata Arctica, ex-Wingdom, ex-Kenziner),
bassist Jukka Koskinen (Norther, Wintersun) and drummer Jani "Hurtsi"
Hurula (Paul Di'Anno), and with a line-up like this featuring some of
the finest Finnish musical talent you’d need a vocalist equal if not
more up for the task and Liimantainen has enlisted the rich vocal talent
of the one and only Timo Kotipelto (Stratovarius, Kotipelto). So
is the sum of the artist’s equal to the sum of the album? OH YES! This
is one hell of a good album! It
opens up with ‘My Queen Of Winter’, a massive blood pumping Metal
surge with Kotipelto’s vocals delivering the majestic force we are
used to with Stratovarius, but this combined with the driven riffs of
Liimatainen, well the result is quite outstanding. This
magnificent quality is continued throughout the album as the album
continues its thunderous metal path with ‘More Than Friends’ and the
Titanic pummeling of ‘Oceans Of Regret’. The only difference
being that if this track hit an iceberg it would simply be blown away
into a pile of ice only suitable for cocktail hour, such is the power
behind this track. After
such a thunderous slice of Metal you need to cool off a bit and the
superb Symphonic tones of the title track ‘Gathering The Faithful’
will do just that for you. A great mix of orchestral keys and
looming bass lines of the opening few moments, leads the way to a
majestic mix of gentle strings and string keyboards make this a great
instrumental. We
keep with the more gentle refrains with ‘Into The Blue’ before
unleashing the might of ‘Dawn Of Solace’, a pacey double kick
backbeat from Hurula which dominates this one along with Kotipelto’s
outstanding vocals. The
pace is brought back down just a touch with one of my favourite tracks
off the album ‘Thorn In My Side’. A great pounding track that
is true Power Metal and showcases perfectly all the genre stands for.
Big riffs, huge keyboards and a bolstering rhythm section, all capped
off with a great vocalist. One track where Kotipelto comes into his own is the epic ‘Morpheus In Masquerade’, another of my favourite tracks off this superb album. Then it’s back to the all out metal with ‘Stolen Waters’, again with the drums of Hurula dominating this one. ‘Elegantly Broken’ is a track that when I first listened to it, it really got thinking, where have I heard this before? And it took a while but then it finally came to me, Taylor Danes ‘Tell It To My Heart’. Yes the first few chords definitely remind me of this 80’s pop song, but only the first few chords then its just Kotipelto and the piano all the way on this gentle ballad, which ends one of the finest Power Metal albums you’ll hear this year and that's why this album is down as my album of the month for August.
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| Tracklisting:
1.
My Queen Of Winter |
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