ORION'S REIGN — Nuclear Winter (review)

ORION'S REIGN — Nuclear Winter album cover

Album · 2008 · Power Metal

3/5 · 2018-12-17
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Having formed in Athens, Greece in 2005, ORION’S REIGN took a more circuitous route than usual to get their product to market. Attracted to the more melodic side of metal ranging from he power guitar gallops and operatic vocal style of bands like Iron Maiden, Helloween and Gamma Ray the band quickly released two promo CDs titled “Steel Horizon” and “The Guiding Light” which caught the attention of the metal hungry fans and press of their local scene. After entering competitions for the Greek Heavy Metal and Metal Hammer Magazine, the band had crafted a strong enough track titled “Steel Horizons” which was included on the compilation CD “The Hellenic Assault.”

With the entry of vocalist Yiannis to the band, ORION’S REIGN would take on a more neoclassical and epic power metal approach to their songwriting skills and would continue their interest in blending classical and symphonic elements that featured extensive use of choirs fortified by the bombast of heavy metal guitars and rhythmic heft. After an introductory EP in the form of “Beyond Eternity” in 2007, the band found enough momentum to release their debut album NUCLEAR WINTER the following year in 2008. This debut would cannibalize much of the 2007 EP but tease out the possibilities into full album form.

NUCLEAR WINTER was released originally as a free download, an apparent attempt to expose the band to as much as the world as possible for everybody’s favorite price. The band started off as ambitious to say the least with six official members (Yiannis on vocals, Noel on drums, Michael on lead guitars, Kyriakos on keyboards and Themis on rhythm guitars) and no less than ten guests that not only added extra guitar, bass and keyboard parts but mostly provided the rich tapestry of vocals that constitute a full choir effect. While all sounds good, NUCLEAR WINTER unfortunately falls short of its goals and results in a rather lopsided classic 80s metal sound embellished with symphonic and power metal elements.

Musically ORION’S REIGN crafts a typical slice of symphonically embellished power metal with the expected melodic twin guitar fueled rampage through heavy riffing, extensive soloing and extra attention to keyboard dominated scenes that equal the rhythmic bombast of the bass and drum combo effect. While implementing the classic Helloween and Gamma Ray approach, this debut exercises many of the classic 80s metal tricks as well with bluesy metal shuffles and the lazy drumming only to keep the beat approach, however more often than not the band exude a sense of flashiness that displays their instrumental prowess in full glory with tracks like the instrumental “Steel Horizons” finding the greatest liberties in strutting their stuff.

Other deviations from the classic / power metal traditions include a Celtic jig intro on “Oldead” and other interesting folk oriented breaks out of the norm from time to time. Musically, a competent album indeed, so what’s not to like? Well, the production and mixing of this self-financed debut seems to be lacking and to be honest, the vocal style of Yiannis does get the job done but neither does he blow away any established great vocalist of the power metal world, nor does he exude any idiosyncrancies that allow him to stand out from the pack. While the backing vocals are aplenty, they are rather weak and almost inaudible for much of the album’s run. Add to that there are moments where they are out of tune with the lead singer and considering this is a melodic album through and through, not a desired element of dissonance that works. This is not a Meshuggah album.

Back to the production, the lead vocals are mixed way too high over the surrounding instrumentation which brings out the limitations of an adequate but not outstanding vocal ability of Yiannis. Every so often a few growly vocals are thrown in which make no sense in this context. Perhaps this all results that the band spent most of their early years without a vocalist and are trying to advertise that they are a now a vocal oriented band with an in-yer-face approach above all else. While NUCLEAR WINTER is a decent debut which was completely free of charge (and still is) to experience, this one could more properly be thought of as more of a demo of sort that displays the nascent symphonic power metal possibilities that are unresolved here.

The band manage to craft beautiful hooks with ample supplies of riffing and metal bombast and even master the tender moments where the folk and symphonic elements reign supreme but somehow the album feels rather amateurish despite the more than competent instrumental performances. While ORION’S REIGN attempt to create a lush epic sounding piece of power metal, the symphonic elements often get buried beneath the thundering distortion of the guitars and the percussive parts often fall into a lazy mode that doesn’t suit the style of music.

In the end NUCLEAR WINTER is a mixed bag. It hits the mark for the arrangements which master the symphonic and epic power metal aspects with elements of 80s classic metal and polyphonic vocal parts with extreme guitar bombast but fails to weave all the included elements into a completely satisfying and cohesive unit. Power and symphonic metal are very fragile in that it only necessitates a scant few elements to be off mark to derail the process and that is exactly what NUCLEAR WINTER feels like to me. An almost perfected album that due to financial restraint or time pressures to release, somehow got rushed through the final processes.

While intended for fans of Rhapsody of Fire, Kamelot, Nightwish, Sabaton, Iron Maiden and similarly related bands that emphasize melodic bombast as their primary goal, ORION’S REIGN found themselves at an awkward stage on NUCLEAR WINTER that doesn’t quite satisfy my power metal sensibilities despite displaying exquisite instrumental performances and a collection of eleven tracks that find themselves imitating perfectly yet not elevating themselves above the established status quo of the more sophisticated bands that have mastered the uncanny balancing acts that incorporating so many disparate elements of music requires. Still though, a good debut only with too many flaws to really break through the crowded metal scene.