Time Signature Enter the noodle shop...

Genre: power metal

Javelin's "Fragments of the Inner Shadow" is marketed as a prog power metal album, so I naturally expected something along the lines of Symphony X, Pyramaze or Royal Hunt. That's not quite what I got, because there really is nothing progressive about this album. Power metal, yes, and good power metal, I should say, but not prog power metal.

Heavily influenced by the likes of Iron Maiden and Iced Earth, Javelin treat the listener to plenty of noodling twin guitar parts. Let it be known that I love noodles (in fact I'm enjoying a pot of chicken noodles at this very moment). Let it also be known that I love twin guitars. Thus, noodling twin guitars in not a bad thing to me. Indeed, a track like 'Birth of a Plague' features some intricate twin guitar leads. Another attractive feature of this album is Carsten Hille's soaring and powerful, yet edgy vocals, which are totally free of the cheese one might otherwise associate with European power metal. It is his vocals that give the power ballad 'Healing' its unique character. Observing the principles of power metal, Javelin include several instances of pounding double bass drums, and the chorises are larger than live. A track like 'Falling' even verges of power-thrash metal.

The production is perhaps a bit fuzzy, and the performance is not always tight but that just gives the album an air of underground authenticity (it is released on Pure Underground after all), and an almost live feel.

Overall, this is a solid album which is characterized by big melodies and soaring vocals, and it is definitely in a cheese-free vein of power metal. Fans of Iron Maiden and Iced Earth are bound to like it.

Kev Rowland I am not sure of the complete history of this band, but I do know that they were formed in Hamm in Germany back in 1982 and it only took 15 years before they released their debut EP. They broke up at some point after that, but started getting back together in 2003, and by the time they self-released their debut album in 2009 drummer Christoph Kock was the sole person who had not been in the band previously. Bassist Volker Scholz quit the band in 2010 and was replaced by Dominik Welge, and now they have released their debut album through a label, and mighty fine it is too. Apparently they started life on a diet of Helloween, Exodus and Maiden, but now it appears that American power metal is the flavour of the day.

This is classic Power/Prog Metal with high and powerful vocals, bringing together both American and German influences to create something that sounds as if Helloween have got into bed with the likes of Iced Earth (and latter period Tygers of Pan Tang) and made music together. The vocals have an edge to them that stops them from being too harmonic, and this provides a rougher feel to the overall sound which definitely works. This sounds like the debut album by a young and hungry band, not guys who have been at this on and off for thirty years, so it will be interesting to see how they follow this up.