Valley’s Eve
“Deception of Pain”
(SPV)
Brilliant, bone crushing, very mosh oriented riffs interrupt what is otherwise very standard power metal faire. Waiting for the tantalizing heaviosity* of the guitar player’s finer moments is like listening to classical, say the Overture of 1812, and waiting for the big climactic moments, the cannon blasts, and simply enduring the rest. If classical isn’t your thing and you can’t sink your eyeteeth into my swinging comparison then let’s work out another simile for you. The band is like porno. The guitar sometimes gives you hardcore, balls slapping off a chin, cum gargling action, but then you have to wait as they go through some derivative segue as the UPS man enters the house and delivers his big brown package.
Is it worth the wait overall? Well, that all depends on your tolerance level for banality and irksome keyboard passages. I myself can endure the interludes between the big meaty guitar parts, but I can’t do it for the entire album. A song here and there over the course of a week is about all of this I could muster and since that’s the case I’d rather go out find a band that gives me what I want 100% of the time like one of those videos that’s nothing but a compilation the last few minutes of each scene leading up to the money shot.
*Bonus points if you get the “heaviosity” film reference.
