Band:	Ligeia
Album:	Gloria
Style:	Heavy metal
Release date:	2004

01. Mistress Of The Night
02. Angelwitch
03. Gloria
04. Heaven is Hell
05. Walpurgisnight
06. Last Desire
07. Beyond The Sky
08. Wings Of Fire
09. Light Of The Gods
10. Silence

Female fronted Metal becomes more and more usual these days, but we have some legends even in this subject, and one of them, the biggest of them all, is Doro Pesch (Warlock, Doro), and this new German female fronted band, Ligeia (after a Edgar Allan Poe novel) has no other than just Doro as influence, or Warlock to be more precisely. But it's not only Warlock, there is also some Stormwitch, Judas Pries and newer Epic metal, like Majesty and even some Manowar similarities.

Ligeia was founded in 1999 in the city of Ulm, south Germany, and they released their debut album, "Made in Stone" in 2000 as private press.
Then in 2002 they recorded a 2-song-maxi-single and short after a full-length album "Beyond the Sky", but the album was never released because of some problems with their old record company.
It took Ligeia two years to solve the problems with the label and mean time two new members joined, Michael Sommer (Bass) & Roland Klein (Drums), and together with Daniela Unglert (Vocals) & Jörg Mayer (Guitars) today's line-up of Ligeia was complete.
At that point Ligeia decided to re-record the whole album, and so they did.
"Gloria" was recorded and now it's released through Iron Glory Records/Massacre Records.

First thing I recalled when I started the album was Daniela's voice, it's superb and the first song wasn't bad either, "Mistress of the Night" the strongest track on the album.
What a start of the album, I'm almost flying around in here.
Then the second track starts and I hear that "Angelwitch" can't anyhow compete to starter, but that's ok, I mean the first is a killer.
Then the title track comes, "Gloria", it's the second best, but it's nothing against the first one, and now I'm starting slowly stop flying, I starting to smell a rat.
Now it's going fast, all the following tracks a mediocre, not any of the coming even close to the starter.

But don't think the album sucks for that, because Daniela's voice saves the day and it's a very good reason why to buy this album. And overall the album it's a good on that originate from the 80ties Metal scene, and I think many fans of the music from that time will take this album to their hearts, because there is hard to find bands today that does this music.

So, if you're into Metal from the 80ties and can't get enough of it, here you have some more, female fronted Heavy/Power with Epic hymn, hard guitar riffs and pounding drums.
I'm sure you'll not be disappointed with it.
But if you're not into it, this can be quite hard for you to accept, since Ligeia doesn't bring anything new to the scene, it's more like a tribute to what once was. But who knows, maybe you'll dig this album, give it a try.

Favourite Song: "Mistress of the Night" is a real killer, and maybe "Gloria" then.