Band:	At Vance
Album:	Chained
Style:	Heavy metal, Power metal
Release date:	April 2005

01. Rise From The Fall
02. Heaven
03. Tell Me
04. Chained
05. Now Or Never
06. Two Hearts
07. Intervention
08. Run/Leave
09. Live For The Scared
10. Vivaldi Winter
11. Run For Your Life

"Chained", or the great return of Mr Olaf Lenk and his band mates of AT Vance. No surprise one more time, that's a classic European Power Metal release but unfortunately the band doesn't know how to avoid the clichés of the genre. In my opinion something will have to be done soon if they really want to survive in our malicious Metal world?

This album is not the worst release of the year, but let me think about it, let me check one more time? Hoo yes, that's maybe the 20th new album of Power Metal that I have to listen to this year, and you know what? This album sound like 98% of all these releases, that's always the same boring Power Metal. I don't understand actually why some few bands are able to do something a bit more original and not the others, I mean we don't ask a lot but just a bit more of personality and it cannot kill you if you take some risks. Unfortunately that's not the case with this "Unchained"

Then ok, we have some nice songs on this album, like "Now Or Never" or "Live For The Scared" but in general that's not really exciting, maybe that this album could be a good one if this Power Metal trend wasn't here but that's not the case and when you'll listen to "Unchained" you'll certainly agree with me. The riffs are really melodic, and evidently you can add the "sacred" double bass drums too, Mats Levén [ex: Yngwie Malmsteen] is a good singer and yes all the musicians of At Vance are good no doubt but that's just surprising to see that they cannot propose something a bit more addictive something we can really touch you. That's just a bit too uncoloured for me and that's disappointing because At Vance is able to release something better.

At least we have a perfect production a great cover and artwork that show one more time that we are in front of a really professional band, and I hope that they will be able to prove us soon that they can have some "original" ideas for their music too?

This is not a bad album, but really I think that At Vance (like some other bands) will have to try to add something more in their future releases because that's a just average and we can find albums like this one everyday. Unfortunately I don't see how they will resist to the mastodons that are the last Kamelot and Masterplan or the upcoming Shaaman, then let's just pray for some more originality and personality for the future of At Vance.