OLYMPOS MONS - Medievil

Here’s an album made out of passion and admiration for melodic metal and its champions, whose influences are more at home here than dragons in a Rhapsody of Fire album. Except the aforementioned, Medievil has much bigger and every bit as direct references to Helloween, Gamma Ray and Stratovarius, and do not fail to stress them with a healthy helping of persistent symphonic keyboards and some Celtic melodies, with or without bagpipes. And so they gather them and mix them around, and at a point you don’t know what band you were hearing (which one is the Shadow Gallery tribute? was it the last one? I forgot...), because it’s clear that Olympos Mons haven‘t got much to bring from their own. Without excelling in voice (Highhill has listened well to Kiske and Kotipelto, but is far from measuring up to any of them) or the instruments (unexciting parts), with a rather unfortunate sound, our Finns still manage to put together a few very good songs, of which Frozen stands out as a super-hit. I think that any listener of melodic metal would find something pleasant on this album, but I also think that anyone would be hard pressed to find anything original on it either. So leave your expectations at the door and prepare to hum along merrily, because it's contagious if you let it.
(+) good songs, varied, energetic, melodic
(-) they plagiarize mercilessly, some sort of best of power metal

Klawz Nota: 8