Band:	Dawn Of Destiny
Album:	Rebellion In Heaven
Style:	Power metal
Release date:	August 2008

01. Angel Without Wings
02. In Between
03. Save Us
04. Lost
05. Perceive Me
06. Unexpected Guest
07. Tears Of Sorrow
08. Inquisition
09. Rain
10. Ending Dream
11. Last Day
12. Heaven's Falling Down
13. Days Of Crying
14. Where Are You Now?

Everyone who knows a little bit about power metal knows that the scene is currently overflowing with symphonic power metal bands with female vocals, or Nightwish-clones if you prefer to call them that way. Some are even worse and most are just as average, however quite a lot are also much better and show this kind of musical can actually have a lot more potential than being a very easily accessible link between pop and power metal. What about Dawn Of Destiny?

After a moment of consideration - it really didn't take me long actually - I came to the conclusion that this group has much more balls than most bands that decide to share their much-trodden path. I think the easiest way to describe them is to compare them to some other bands. On their myspace page they cite Helloween, Nightwish and Slayer (among others) as their main influence, if you take the sound of those three bands and put some Edguy into the mix you'll have a pretty good idea of what these Germans sound like. Female vocal fronted power metal with some precise riffing, notably heavier than in most power bands, a few uber-catchy choruses, some hyper-melodic keyboard-driven pieces, a few very nice guitar solos and last but not least some very fast drumming for this subgenre.

There are a lot of crossovers between different metal genres in the scene of heavy metal, sometimes they're pure innovation, sometimes they work well, and sometimes they don't. In this case here it's an absolute perfect fit. The heavier guitars give a really nice sharp edge to some of the songs, yet at the same time this is catchy European-style power metal at a high level.

However I have the feeling that this album could have been a lot better. The reason is quite simple; there should have been some more of what I described in the paragraph above. While some of the songs have an aggressive touch, there are even a few growled passages on here, the larger part of the album is almost pure power metal. There are also a couple of songs, the most peaceful ones which focus mainly on vocals and keyboard, which take this discrepancy even further. I wouldn't say that the singer has a bad voice, not at all, but it's just that the multi-layered catchy choruses fit her far better than a ballad-style of singing. When I listen to a song like "Unexpected Guest" with its' constant fast drumming, the edgy guitar parts, really catchy chorus and the great solo in it and even some growled parts or for example the opener "Angel Without Wings" with its' upbeat perfect sing-along refrain and fast drumming, or "Days Of Crying" with the thrashy riffing (and again a very catchy refrain of course), I really wish that the whole album could have been like this. But alas it's not the case.

So in the end what shall my verdict be? This is definitely much better stuff than the average band of this type. Even without the thrash metal elements the power metal elements are superior to most comparable bands (just check out the song "Heaven's Falling Down" for an example of excellent melodic German power metal), yet the thrash metal incorporated into their sound is what makes them not only slightly over average, but very good in this subgenre, it's what makes them stand out from the masses. Summing up this album will definitely find it's way back into my stereo from time to time, yet if they had made their heavier influences their trademark-sound instead of just an instrument to fall back on occasionally this could have become a brilliant piece of art. As it is it still gets a very solid 8.5 from my side of things.