Band:	Invictus
Album:	Persecution
Style:	Power metal
Release date:	April 20, 2009
A review by:	Bas

01. Face To Face Part I
02. Kill The Dogs
03. Silence Of Death
04. Agony Of War
05. Spiral
06. Face To Face Part II [Instrumental]
07. Face To Face Part III
08. The Eclipse Of The World
09. See You Black
10. Demons
11. Rosy Rose
12. The Angels [live] [bonus]

A whole 6 years after the release of Black Heart, which has been handled as quite a hot tip amongst power metal connoisseurs (although I'll have to admit that I personally never actually listened to it, even though it has been recommended to me) Invictus are back with Persecution.

Like I already said; Invictus play power metal. Luckily they're not saving any damsels in distress, nor slaughtering any dragons, and best of all, although this is just a guess; they don't wear loincloths. To make our luck even bigger, they don't bother us with fifth-rate spoken samples or two-minute epic/symphonic instrumental interludes that should make us think about magic forests. In other words most power metal is cheesier than this.

Invictus utilise a lot of different elements in their music. There are some Evergreyish riffs, some Thresholdish vocals, hard rock-like choruses, choirs, acoustic passages, symphonic parts, etc. slight traces of both Iced Earth and Stratovarius seem to be present too. A few ballads and many great solos round off the package.

Although the CD as a whole is really solid, it didn't have any kind of wow-effect on me. The musicians are all tight as a ducks rectum and the variation is great, however the songs fail to get me at an emotional level. This might be due to the vocals. The singer knows how to sing and he can do a lot of different things with his voice, but in the end he seems to suffer of a lack of energy in his performance.

While being a strong effort and an all-round pretty good album, I don't see myself listening to it on a regular basis. I do however recommend everyone into slightly progressive power metal giving their myspace a try though. After all these guys are definitely over average. And in the power metal scene being over average is already quite a feat nowadays.