VIRGIN STEELE — The House Of Atreus: Act I (review)

VIRGIN STEELE — The House Of Atreus: Act I album cover Album · 1999 · US Power Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
irregardlessly
To me, this album is the embodiment of symphonic power metal. Part 1 of The House of Atreus is Virgin Steele at their most complex, pompous, and melodramatic. The album consists of VS's bombastic melodic songs, separated by more classical instrumental type segue breaks. The album is a concept album about some ancient greek myth type stuff.

The songs are all mostly pretty great. Highlights for me include the galloping opener Kingdom of the Fearless, Return of the King/Flames of the Black Star, and the great closing suite of Garden of Lamentation / Agony and Shame (who's theme is a callback to a theme on Invictus) / Gate of Kings / Via Sacra. In between these opuses you have standard VS rocking goodness like Great Sword of Flame and Through the Ring of Fire.

The short musical segues are of varying quality. I find them to be mostly of decent quality, and feel that they add to the album as a whole, cohesive work. However, sometimes they fall a bit flat. Blaze of Victory for example is 4 minutes of mostly spoken word storytelling over music. It's not terrible but usually a skipper for me.

If you love your metal melodramatic, bombastic, powerful, and melodic, you will love this album. The real songs are great, but the segues can detract a little so I docked this a star and called it a 4.
Share this review
more

Review Comments

Post a public comment below | Send private message to the reviewer
Please login to post a shout
No shouts posted yet. Be the first member to do so above!

Review Index

Member Zone

Username:
Password:
Stay signed in

Metal Subgenres

Artists Alpha-index

MMA TOP 5 Metal ALBUMS

Rating by members, ranked by custom algorithm
Albums with 30 ratings and more
Master of Puppets Thrash Metal
METALLICA
Buy this album from our partners
Paranoid Heavy Metal
BLACK SABBATH
Buy this album from our partners
Moving Pictures Hard Rock
RUSH
Buy this album from our partners
Powerslave NWoBHM
IRON MAIDEN
Buy this album from our partners
Rising Heavy Metal
RAINBOW
Buy this album from our partners

New Metal Artists

New Metal Releases

Rankarumpu Folk Metal
KORPIKLAANI
Buy this album from MMA partners
… And the Universe Keeps Silent Death Metal
MAERE
Buy this album from MMA partners
Le bannissement Atmospheric Black Metal
CANTIQUE LÉPREUX
Buy this album from MMA partners
Tarantula Heart Sludge Metal
MELVINS
Buy this album from MMA partners
God Damned You To Hell Traditional Doom Metal
FRIENDS OF HELL
Buy this album from MMA partners
More new releases

New Metal Online Videos

Fallen Ashes - Wage War (Official Lyric Video)
FALLEN ASHES
Bosh66· 9 days ago
EXISTENTIAL DEAD - Unreality (Single) 2024
EXISTENTIAL DEAD
Bosh66· 9 days ago
EXISTENTIAL DEAD - Cold Hands
EXISTENTIAL DEAD
Bosh66· 9 days ago
IRON MONKEY - Misanthropizer (Official Music Video)
IRON MONKEY
Bosh66· 11 days ago
??? (Losing ART) - "????" (Official Music Video) [HD]
漂浮者樂團
Bosh66· 12 days ago
More videos

New MMA Metal Forum Topics

More in the forums

New Site interactions

More...

Latest Metal News

members-submitted

More in the forums

Social Media

Follow us
Follow us on Twitter Become a Facebook fan RSS Feed