Driving power metal accompanied by a story line, was my initial reaction when trying to capture this self-proclaimed epic metal work. There is a concept here, which relates to the story of a person whose consciousness is digitally preserved after death. Strangely this applies to the last four songs but not the first three.
“To Ash, To Dust” opens the album, the band’s second, and is a bit of a wordy romp. Plenty of energy there. The second of the “standalone” tracks is “Harvest”. I quite like it, it’s a well delivered piece of melodic hard rock, the drums speak, and some sections hit me more than others as it rolled along fluidly, but I found it too bombastic. I also found myself trying to blank out the inevitable game of “which power metal band does this sound like?” “As Through a Child’s Eyes” borders on cheese, but the guitar play is immaculate as ever and the vocalist is clearly good at what he does and can both work and hold a note. Singing about being a better man might appeal to some, but not me. Although I’m not really inspired by this, I do get that this is a talented band who know how to compose anthemic songs.
So, we go to the concept part, starting with “Flesh Falls from Steel”, another power metal romp. The inevitable guitar solo weaves in nicely. There’s definitely something of Iron Maiden about this. Whilst being commercial is far from being a crime, it is heavily so. On we ride into “Mihra, Tell Me the Nature of Your Existence”, from which the album title is derived. Hang on, isn’t this the same as the previous song. The singer seems to be straining this time, which surprised me as so far he’d mixed expression with quality and range. I’ll be honest and say that by the time I got to the identikit “Cry Havoc”, I’d gone into auto pilot and while listening to it, was checking the website of ProgPower Europe, where people might appreciate this more than I was. “In this darkest of times … take my hand I will lead you from this place to eternity” etc etc go the lyrics of the ever pompous “Spinning Webs, Catching Dreams”. I’m sure it has redeeming qualities but it all sounded the same and washed over me, I’m afraid.
Clearly Terminus have a style which doesn’t appeal to me, although I do own albums by Helloween and DGM and others of a similar ilk. I therefore have to be careful with my words, because I’m sure there are those who would be roused and excited by this. “A Single Point of Light” sticks to its remit, and instrumentally it’s fine but the concept was lost, and in spite of all the puffed out chests and bombast, I found this rather dull.
(4/10 Andrew Doherty)
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