Kingshmegland - There Are No Gods Among Us
Blue Murder - Valley of the Kings
Bruce Soord - Frozen North
Pagan's Mind - Approaching
Pagan's Mind - Through Osiris' Eyes
Ancestors - On the Wind
Circus Maximus - The Weight
First Impression - This starts off way better than it ends
Starting this off with Valley of the Kings is one hell of a way to start an EP. Here's another band that I apparently need to look into. Now, parts of this song sound a lot like Whitesnake's Still of the Night. This isn't a bad thing, because Still of the Night is awesome and it's probably because this has John Sykes on guitar as well and he apparently only uses 1 guitar tone. Especially in the guitar solo and oh, that keyboard melody during the solo is almost identical to Still of the Night. I'm not completely convinced by his vocals though. They're just OK. On the other hand, Tony Franklin and Carmine Appice kill it on bass and drums. Frozen North is a polarizing song for me. I guess it's a collaboration between Bruce Soord and Jonas Renske. I like both of them in their respective bands and I think it's an interesting take having Bruce's songwriting behind Jonas' vocals, but unfortunately it doesn't really grab me too much. Also as an interesting side note, in Bruce's main band, Pineapple Thief, their bass player's name is Jon Sykes
Now the two Pagan's Mind songs are great. I really like this band, but I just don't listen to them enough. I always forget how good they are. Approaching works as a nice segue with some great riffs and then Through Osiris' Eyes hits you in the face with some tasty Power/Prog. I really like Nils vocals and I'm just now realizing he was the vocalist on one of the Eidolon songs that Wolfking sent in the first round. I don't know how I didn't put that together. His voice is very reminiscent of peak Edu Falaschi. The band has a great sense of melody and it's used to great effect throughout the song. Next up is On the Wind by Ancestors. I've always been a fan of their albums Suspended in Reflections and Of Sound Mind, but never really connected with the album this song is from very well. The song is alright, but is just kind of flat throughout and is probably about 2-3 minutes too long. It just doesn't do nearly enough to justify 9 minutes. Anyway, moving on the The Weight, which might be the best song on side A of Havoc. Not my favorite Circus Maximus album (that would be The 1st Chapter), but it's not far behind. It was definitely better than Isolate and Nine, in my opinion. This song has some nice catchy melodies with more proggy bits. The chorus to this song gets stuck in my head every time I hear it. And that guitar solo is magical. Then Michael just kills it on vocals, like always and Truls is my drumming spirit animal, love his drum style! Great way to end this EP. Also I have no idea what I was talking about in my first impression now
Song Score - 8/10
The story here sounds almost exactly like what I want out of a fantasy story, only severely condensed and lacking in details. But that is fine, because this feels almost like the synopsis for a grand and epic tale and something that could easily be expanded into a massive story. I am curious where you came up with the names for the people and places, I'm guessing you just made them up. They sound convincingly named though. The songs mostly fit with the story, the only exception being The Weight. I felt the lyrics to this song had little connection to the story. Other than that I enjoyed it.
Story Score - 8/10 +1 for bonus theme
I gotta hand it to you on the flow here. For just sending me a playlist of songs, this flowed almost too well. I think there was some witchcraft in the song choices here. As I kept listening to this EP and all the others I kept thinking how unfair it would be to give you a great flow score, even though you did nothing
Oh well, everyone else is just going to have to suck it up. Granted there are a couple edits that could have been done to make it perfect, in my opinion, but they weren't necessary for my enjoyment.
Flow Score - 8.5/10
Overall Score - 25.5/30