Band:	Iron Mask
Album:	Fifth Son Of Winterdoom
Style:	Power metal
Release date:	November 2013

01. Back Into Mystery
02. Like A Lion In A Cage
03. Only One Commandment
04. Seven Samurai
05. Fifth Son Of Winterdoom
06. Angel Eyes, Demon Soul
07. Rock Religion
08. Father Farewell
09. Eagle Of Fire
10. Reconquista 1492
11. Run To Me
12. The Picture Of Dorian Grey



Iron Mask, one of the two sons of Belgian guitarist Dushan Petrossi alongside with Magic Kingdom, is back with its fifth effort and, wonder of wonders, they've managed to maintain the same line-up that recorded 2011's Black As Death!

To anyone who's even slightly familiar with Iron Mask, this album has really few chances to bamboozle you, since Petrossi doesn't seem too interested in revolutionizing his trademark style. For those of you that are new with the band, I'm pretty sure I'll feed your curiosity about this combo's genre saying that it inherits atmospheres and sound from the Scandinavian branch of power metal, while, regarding the inescapable cheesiness, it draws inspiration from the German division.

This said, you should have already figured out whether Fifth Son Of Winterdoom suits your tastes or not, so let's start analyzing it in its features. If this album had to be portrayed in two words, those would be traditional and good. And, although those adjectives are pretty trivial, I could have almost finished describing this release.

This, in fact, being a typical power metal album, has infinitesimal chances to appeal to genre outsiders, while it will likely be well accepted by the tireless lovers of blades, ice, armours and cartoon-style covers (even if I have to admit that this time the album artwork has somehow gone beyond rationality). Every feature this last group of people have learned to worship is there, and is actually upright. Vocals, guitar work, musicianship in general, the tempo, the song placement, the ballad, the suites, are good overall.

The problem is that Fifth Son Of Winterdoom fails in displaying that quid required for it to emerge from the sea of "just good" albums. For every dynamic Stratovarius-like guitar-keyboard duet there's a questionable choice of lyrics, for a surprisingly good song topic as the one in "The Picture Of Dorian Gray" there's a filler that could have been avoided, for every good sing-along chorus there are ideas that could have been implemented. And that's the leitmotif of the whole album: for every light that shines, there's a hidden dark hole.

Luckily, merits here take the lead over blemishes, granting the album's overall enjoyment from start to finish. Judging from the 2010 and 2011 releases, Shadow Of The Red Baron and Black As Death, Iron Mask fans could have expected something more, but this is it: a good power metal release. Nothing more, but, what's probably more important, nothing less.