Artist: Narnia
Title: Course Of A Generation
Type: Album
Label: Massacre Records
I recall first stumbling across Narnia during the whole late-90s power metal resurgence spearheaded back then by burgeoning German label Nuclear Blast. Hammerfall were the name on everyone’s lips and suddenly, leather trousers, swords, falsetto vocals and songs about dragons were acceptable again. Narnia cropped up with their debut around this time but even back then, their brand of whimsical, lightweight power metal struck me as effete and lacking in substance. The follow-up ‘Long Live the King’ was even more balls-free (it honestly made the theme tune to ‘The Never Ending Story’ sound like Sadistik Execution) and I mentally consigned the band and their wearying Christian preaching to the sonic dustbin.
Over a decade later and assuming the band to have been long consigned to the annals of metal history, ‘Course of a Generation’ lands in my lap (well, inbox) and it becomes apparent within the space of a few minutes that Narnia have well and truly grown some testicles. They’ve clearly been listening to more than a little Nevermore with a fair dose of modern Euro-metal stalwarts Symphorce thrown in. The wimpy ditties of old have been replaced by some razor sharp tech-riffing, snappy drumming and occasional passages of all-out thrash. With the possible exception of the vocals, this really could have been released by a different band – just listening to the blistering thrash workouts that bookend the title track make it almost impossible to rectify this with the outfit that churned out such pap at the end of the last millennium.
OK, so it goes without saying that this record suffers from the usual myriad faults that plague mainstream-orientated metal in 2009 – namely, ghastly overproduction that manages to wring out any sense of real passion. There’s also a lingering suspicion of contrivance that hangs over the whole thing - it’s almost TOO convenient that this record is a musical mash up of Nevermore, Killswitch Engage and Nightwish, all topped off with a dash of Halford/Dickinson in the vocal department. In many ways, this record manages to tick just about every box of what’s popular in the commercial upper-echelons of today’s metal scene. Credit due where credit’s due though and if you lap up this sort of uber-clean modern metal, you could do worse than check out Narnia’s latest – and that’s a statement I never thought I’d type.
http://www.myspace.com/narniaofficial
Frank Allain
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