Sadly, Thousand Swords was way better. This album is groovey but it lacked the awesome solos (except for Unrestrained) and the spectacular key-boards like the 1st album. It's just my opinion though. I only enjoyed "Jikininki, Lady of The Wind, Unrestrained & Upon - My - Honor".

Written by BloodJuNkie on 03.02.2014 at 17:18

Sadly, Thousand Swords was way better. This album is groovey but it lacked the awesome solos (except for Unrestrained) and the spectacular key-boards like the 1st album. It's just my opinion though. I only enjoyed "Jikininki, Lady of The Wind, Unrestrained & Upon - My - Honor".

For me they made every change I was h
oping they were gong to. Better vocals and more consistent

Written by JÄY on 03.02.2014 at 19:51

For me they made every change I was h
oping they were gong to. Better vocals and more consistent

Agreed on those, but add to them "more boring" .. I knew this was going to happen once they announced that there'll be no keyboards in this album. Except the songs i mentioned above the album is just groove with some Japanese influences. No nice riffs no amazing solos :/

Written by BloodJuNkie on 03.02.2014 at 20:58

Agreed on those, but add to them "more boring" .. I knew this was going to happen once they announced that there'll be no keyboards in this album. Except the songs i mentioned above the album is just groove with some Japanese influences. No nice riffs no amazing solos :/

I totally agree, more boring and definitely needed the keyboards and much less orchestration - namely the choirs, not the traditional japanese stuff. What a shame. It seems they were really gunning for that record deal(which didn't even pan out btw) as if they took there trademark style and asked themselves, how can we make this more generic? And so they did, the riffs are trying to hard to be "metal" and the orchestrations sound like some cheap Dimmu knock off, which is also incredibly generic atm. I wish instead they just embraced their quirky and unique style of "Thousands Swords" and developed and polished it further.

The only song I whole-heartedly enjoy is "Hold the Sword", which is probably one of my favorite of theirs to date but the rest is entirely sub-par for a band with so much potential.

Written by AngelofDeth on 03.02.2014 at 23:29

I totally agree, more boring and definitely needed the keyboards and much less orchestration - namely the choirs, not the traditional japanese stuff. What a shame. It seems they were really gunning for that record deal(which didn't even pan out btw) as if they took there trademark style and asked themselves, how can we make this more generic? And so they did, the riffs are trying to hard to be "metal" and the orchestrations sound like some cheap Dimmu knock off, which is also incredibly generic atm. I wish instead they just embraced their quirky and unique style of "Thousands Swords" and developed and polished it further.

The only song I whole-heartedly enjoy is "Hold the Sword", which is probably one of my favorite of theirs to date but the rest is entirely sub-par for a band with so much potential.

Yeah right. IMO the only song that reminds me of Thousand Swords is "Unrestrained". "Jikininki" is brutal but not too bad and "Lady of The Wind" is the only successful song in that new style of them IMO. This album can be just a fall down and they may return back to their 1st album's style in the upcoming album, i wish so.

The albums gets better after giving it more listens, but i still prefer Thousand Swords!

Wow, I'm a bit surprised nigh all of the comments are backlash. I'm in my first listen right now, but so far I'm thoroughly loving it. I'd say Thousand Swords is better, but it needs multiple listens before I can make that judgment.