REINXEED — A New World (review)

Album · 2013 · Power Metal

3/5 · 2013-09-11
adg211288

A New World (2013) is the sixth full-length album by Swedish symphonic power metal act ReinXeed. The band, led by Tommy Johansson (vocals, guitars, keyboards), are quite the productive outfit having not to date failed to deliver a new album every single year since 2008's debut The Light (a point which Tommy Johansson was the sole member). A New World sees the introduction of a couple of new musicians to the group, Christopher Davidsson (bass) and Alfred Fridhagen (drums). The latter also performs with Tommy in Golden Resurrection since 2012.

The music is melodic and symphonic driven power metal. There isn't much more that can be elaborated on than that, since A New World is one of those albums that sticks to its main genre without any stepping outside of the comfort zone. Fortunately for ReinXeed they clearly have a knack for this sort of power metal and have put out a solid bunch of tracks for the album. It simply isn't going to break the mould. I've heard the progressive term used in conjunction with ReinXeed before but on A New World I'm not hearing it. The closest the album comes to stepping away from the power metal conventions is the closing title track, but even then, the end result is really just a symphonic power metal track with an extra layer of epic quality on top. It's easily the album's best song because of that, but I think the real highlight of the release is not any one song but rather Tommy Johansson's vocals, which are excellent throughout.

The point where my regard for the album takes a hit though is the production. Never mind that a song like Guitar Hero appears to be written as a dig against anyone who plays and enjoys the video game it is named after, or that Northern Allstars is ridiculous on so many levels, this is the real killer. And besides, I really couldn't care less what bands want to sing about and the music of Guitar Hero at least is on the higher end of things, although Northern Allstars is easily the weakest track. Tommy's vocals come out well in the sound and the symphonic elements not too bad but the guitars are the problem. The leads aren't so bad, but the riffs sound really awful right from the get go. It's a really muddy sound and it's like the guitars are playing a supporting role through the bulk of the album. This is not something I really expect from any kind of metal genre, even in symphonic power metal. I think the riffs should have more of a presence in the music than they've been allowed here. Power metal is, let's face it, an increasingly crowded genre so unless a release has abundant other qualities to make up for the weak production, this isn't really something I expect listeners are going to want to put up with.

So in that respect ReinXeed's A New World ends up a bit of a disappointing release. I'm going to play fair and rate it with a 'above average' album tier rating all the same, because aside from the poor sound production and general safe feel of the album there's an undeniable energy to the music which is one of the first things I look for in a power metal release. But at the same time, there's simply not enough been done here to really warrant not skipping over it in favour of other, similar but superior releases.

63/100

(Originally written for Heavy Metal Haven: http://metaltube.freeforums.org/reinxeed-a-new-world-t3180.html)