I am a geek. This will not come as a surprise to you if you are reading a review on a heavy music website; it’s pretty much par for the course for those of us who have decided to tread the path of guitar-based rock music. Specifically, I’m talking about gaming, and in particular table-top role-playing games. I continue to run old-school Advanced Dungeons and Dragons and games, and so when I saw that Achelous were producing another epic heavy metal album, but this time featuring lyrics regarding the “Dragonlance” setting (google it kids), I was giddy with the nostalgia. I really enjoyed their last album, 2022’s “The Icewind Chronicles”, and so I was excited to see what would come next.
Formed in 2011 by bassist Chris Achelous, the Athens, Greece based metal crew are unashamed fans of all things epic and heavy metal. You’d think that from their lyrical inspirations, they might be a power metal band, but I think Tower of High Sorcery is a little more complex than that. I think they display elements of straight-ahead and epic heavy metal with some power metal elements built in. Take “Istar (blood red sea)” for example. Yes, it has a lot of keyboards in it and some (excellent) female vocals, but it also has an extremely cool almost eastern flavour to the guitar work that brings to mind the pacing and phrasing of Solitude Aeturnus. It’s a cool track that really shows the band at its best; impeccable musicianship with some fantastic guitar work, but also the wonderful clear vocals of Chris Kappas, who to me here sounds like a cleaner but no less powerful singer in the vein of Jon Oliva (Savatage) around the period of “Hall of the Mountain King”.
To call “Tower of High Sorcery” epic in scale would be perhaps to undersell it. When the title track finally erupts in a galloping sprint after the grand keyboard swell into a song that opens into another eastern-tinged stomp, it’s quite the glorious moment. Sometimes, it doesn’t quite work, however. The first 15 seconds of (otherwise excellent) mid-pace stomper “Fortress of Sorrow” is marred by a really poor keyboard imitating, I think, a Cello. I understand the limitations of budgets, but it was a little wrenching to be pulled from the imaginary world that Achelous was producing by this jarring sound. Luckily, for the most part the synths are done really well and add to the experience, as with the Maiden-on-steroids canter of “Into the Shadows”, which is a real barnstormer of a track.
The sound throughout is mostly excellent, with just one or two areas where a slightly bigger budget or sharper songwriting might not have left the keyboards so isolated would have been a benefit. All of this is really nitpicking, because to my ears, just 2 years after their last album they’ve clearly grown and got even better at producing killer, unashamedly enjoyable fun for geeks of all ages. Just in case you don’t believe me that this is an epic production, take the final song – “When the Angels Bleed” as an example – at over 9 minutes long, it still doesn’t feel ponderous or too lengthy. Skilled songwriting indeed.
(8.5/10 Chris Davison)
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