UMUR "Melancholy Beast" is the debut studio album by Danish power metal act Pyramaze. The album was released in May 2004 by Nightmare / Massacre Records. "Melancholy Beast" is produced by prolific Danish metal producer Jacob Hansen (Invocator, Maceration, Aborted, Raunchy, Volbeat, Hatesphere, Týr, The Arcane Order, Anubis Gate, Beyond Twilight, Pestilence, Axamenta, Mercenary, Communic...etc). The regular version features nine tracks while the Japanese version features a tenth song called "The Wizard".

The lineup on "Melancholy Beast" consists of three Danes in founding member Michael Kammeyer on guitars, Morten Gade Sørensen on drums and Niels Kvist on bass. In addition to the three Danes Pyramaze also hosts two Americans in Jonah Weingarten on keyboards (whom Michael Kammeyer met over the internet) and Lance King (formerly of Balance of Power) on vocals. So this is a multinational act even though the backbone of the band is Danish.

The music on "Melancholy Beast" is melodic heavy metal/ power metal with lots of keyboards, high pitched vocals, anthemic choruses, a tight rythm section which includes lots of double bass drums and some pretty heavy guitars. The first impression is that it´s "business as usual" power metal. So it very much comes down to the how well the tracks are crafted and the interplay between the musicians. In that department there´s nothing wrong with "Melancholy Beast". This is a very well composed heavy metal/ power metal album and Pyramaze have a distinct and greatly skilled vocalist in Lance King. He´s got a sligth Bruce Dickinson (Iron Maiden) vibe to his vocals that I greatly enjoy. He can sing both soft and pretty raw. A great asset to the band´s sound. Another great feature is the guitar and keyboard solos that are really well played.

The production by Jacob Hansen is professional, powerful and suits the material well.

"Melancholy Beast" is a solid heavy metal/ power metal album and while it certainly isn´t a revelation in any way it´s still an enjoyable release deserving a 3.5 star rating.

Time Signature Tears of metal...

Genre: prog power metal

Pyramaze are an internationally renowned progressive power metal band, celebrated around the world, yet they are unknown to the majority of the population of their home country.

What a shame that is, because Pyramaze are really something to be proud of.

The music on this album is epic and very well performed, reflecting Pyramaze's high level of musicianship and talent for songwriting. The soaring vocals go extremely well with the guitar harmonies and ever-present keyboards. Normally, I am not a big fan of power metal smothered in epic keyboards, but Pyramaze really manage to balance the keyboards and the rest of the instrumentation perfectly, such that they enter into a unified holistic sound.

While based in Euro-power metal, this release is happily free of the cheesiness that normally characterizes this genre, and the atmosphere is actually kind of dark without being oppressive or gloomy.

American vocalist, Lance King, is slightly reminiscent of Geoff Tate at times, and has a clear and powerful soaring voice which suits the music perfectly. Just check the vocal line of the chorus of "Ancient Words Within" and how it is delivered. This particular track is really a stroke of genius!

"Legend of the Bonecarver" is a very good prog power metal release, and if you are a fan of this genre, you should acquire this release.

adg211288 Legend of the Bone Carver is the second full-length album by Danish power metal band Pyramaze, and the last with original vocalist Lance King. It is a concept album, coming complete with narration, but not to the point that the narrative is a dominant feature of the album, something I feel often spoils otherwise really good albums. The music also has something of a progressive flair to it, but not to the point that I'd consider this a prog dominant album. No, Legend of the Bone Carver is for the most part a Euro flavoured power metal album, and all in all a pretty good one at that.

As the album begins we get some symphonic keyboards which are followed by the first lot of spoken word vocals, to be honest these spoken words make the music sound like the beginning of a children’s fantasy film, but don't let that put you off, since for the most part Legend of the Bone Carver is an album that is just as easily taken as songs rather than a concept piece, although on that note the album has a better concept feel to it than many other concepts albums. This intro track, titled Era of Chaos, sets up the album’s concept story in just over a minute so there isn’t long to wait before the actual songs start. Normally I bash intro type tracks but since this one has meaning it’s acceptable. Era of Chaos neatly moves into The Birth and this is where the good metal begins.

Vocalist Lance King however is a bit of an acquired taste, with a voice that even to me, a fan, has it’s annoying moments, and unfortunately one of them is his first singing vocal part. Thankfully though as The Birth gets going his vocals improve, and backed up by heavy power metal guitar riffs, with the keyboards handling most of the melody and some excellent drumming makes for some great metal music.

Third track, What Lies Beyond and the fifth, Souls in Pain are even better. The former has an epic chorus and even features a guest appearance from Lance King’s son, which adds something special to the story side of Legend of the Bone Carver in the fact that the Bone Carver, the story’s character, grows up throughout the early songs in the album so having the father and son vocal team makes for what I can only describe as giving the music a truer feeling in regard to the story. As much as I like him, Lance King would not have sounded good trying to sound like the confused child that the Bone Carver was in that point in the story. However this brings me around to my first problem with this album. I think it would have been better if Tomy King had been used just a little bit more than he was. There are parts in the fourth track, Ancient Words Within that I think he would have suited well. Souls in Pain is one of the albums best songs and like What Lies Beyond has an epic chorus and some excellent guitar playing. Bring Back Life also follows this sort of formula but is twice as good. In my opinion it’s the best song on the album.

It’s not all fast paced power metal however. She Who Summoned Me features a slower piano main musical line and is much more a ballad, even when the electric guitars join in. It is also a duet between Lance King and guest female singer Christina Oberg. The guitar solo here is slow, melodic and fits in perfectly between the vocal parts. This song is beautiful and another great highlight of the album.

The final two tracks again feature the spoken word vocals first heard in Era of Chaos. Blood Red Skies much more than Tears of Hate because it is dominated by the spoken word. It’s like the song is there to set up Tears of Hate as an epilogue for the album. But this is where my second and final complaint about Legend of the Bone Carver comes in. It’s not really a musical fault which is why the final score doesn’t really suffer for it. It’s about the story of Legend of the Bone Carver. It all seems rather rushed and incomplete. From what I gather the Bone Carver discovers his purpose about two third’s of the way into the seventh song, The Bone Carver. That leaves just Bring Back Life to tell the section which, if it was a film or book, would be the main section, the whole point of the story. In short the album seems written with seven tracks to set up the story, one to put across the main point, two to conclude it in an epilogue fashion. It just seems strange to me. As I said, it’s not a musical fault and it’s music that I’m reviewing this for, not Pyramaze’s ability as storytellers, which, if this album is an example to go by, needs a bit of evolution. As a lyrical writer however, chief writer Michael Kammeyer has done no wrong. This is some excellent metal, so forget about the holes in the story and enjoy. I highly recommend this.

(Originally written for Heavy Metal Haven)

adg211288 On Pyramaze's third album. Immortal, it can be said that we have two talents joining together. The first of these is of course the main Pyramaze song writer, Michael Kammeyer, whose songs impressed me greatly on the band’s previous album, Legend of the Bone Carver. The second is the voice of Iced Earth’s Matt Barlow, making his first and sadly his final appearance on a Pyramaze album given his decision to rejoin his former band. Legend of the Bone Carver was an excellent album but due to me being a big Iced Earth fan, and with no disrespect to Lance King (the original Pyramaze singer), I had high hopes for this album. And I can safely say that all my expectations for it were met.

Since I’ve began with talking about Matt Barlow I’ll begin this review proper with the vocal performance. Matt is on very top form on this album. In fact I have to say that this is one of the best performances that I’ve heard from Matt. I’m not going to reference Iced Earth much here since this is a Pyramaze review, but it is my opinion that Matt is better on Immortal than on some of the Iced Earth albums he's sang on. It's especially superior vocals from him than on Iced Earth's own 2008 album The Crucible of Man. He is powerfully and emotional where required and he can do much more extreme vocals than Lance King could. A versatile and highly talent frontman.

Ok, back to Pyramaze. Although the album begins with an intro track it doesn’t completely suck, but neither is it really any good. It’s not really a song, just a build up of music that leads into (but doesn’t surge into as if they were part of the same composition) Year of the Phoenix. It's neither here nor there really. If you like the album as a whole you'll probably play it as a whole and listen to it, it's not something that will catch the attention as a standalone piece.

Music wise the guitar riffs have really improved on Immortal. Kammeyer and fellow guitarist Toke Skjønnemand proved their talent as players already but everything about them is better this time around. The music is much more progressive as well. They’re been labelled as a power/progressive band by many, myself included, since they first showed up on the metal scene but always before it was a case of the power metal influence overpowering the progressive. No longer so, because while for the most part the songs do follow standard structures the actual music being played is very technical and not always strictly played in a power metal style, as in for example The Highland, where the band takes on some influences from folk music, and in Legacy in a Rhyme which is an emotional ballad that features no elements of metal music at all. I must just say that Matt’s best vocals are on this song, even though some of the heavier tracks are technically better from a metal fan's perspective. Overall though genre wise it would still be accurate to class this as primarily a power metal release, but I expect more progressive things to come from Pyramaze in the future.

The best track on Immortal is easily Ghost Light, which mostly uses Barlow’s rougher vocal skills and lasts for over six minutes. The only way I can describe it is as a song with truly epic proportions. But what makes this album really special is that all I just said in this paragraph was just personal opinion. Every song with the exception of the intro and outro tracks is up to this very high standard. Overall heavy, yet versatile and most importantly absolutely fantastic.

Extra note on the special edition of Immortal now. There are two bonus tracks (actually three songs) that have been recorded live. Originally they were the first three songs from Pyramaze’s previous album, Legend of the Bone Carver, but this time Era of Chaos and The Birth have been combined into a single track, which in my opinion should have been done in the first place. The second bonus track is What Lies Beyond. While good songs these songs just don’t stand up to the versions from Legend of the Bone Carver. It’s not Matt Barlow singing either, it’s Lance King and while very good on the studio versions his voice just isn’t quite cutting it live on these takes. I should have liked to hear Matt sing these as a studio tracks bonuses instead of live takes but regardless of whether of not you find these bonus tracks to your liking, it’s the main music of Immortal that you’d want to buy it for and as such is why the score I'm going to give the album doesn’t suffer from my lack of interest in this bonus content.

(Review originally written for Heavy Metal Haven)