Band:	Ninth Circle
Album:	Power Of One
Style:	US power metal
Release date:	December 2008

01. Frontman
02. The Power Of One
03. The Journey
04. Where No One Lives
05. Our Last Days
06. How Many Times
07. Fire Falling
08. Hour 21
09. Obsession
10. If It Bleeds
11. The Trooper [Iron Maiden cover]
12. Prisoner Of The World

Giving their newest output (with a very promising cover art) a first spin I was very surprised to find these Southern Californians playing the melodic power metal style which is so typical for European bands. As most of you probably know the typical "American way" of playing power metal, which is usually much heavier and always has a very much rougher edge, is very different from the "European style" which focuses much more on harmony and melody (and hence is often referred to as "flower metal").

Ninth Circle's music is pretty easy to compare to other bands, imagine songs that sound like Hammerfall with Iron Maiden-esque guitar parts thrown in and vocals that half sound like Stratovarius' frontman Kotipelto. Mixing these three bands you should have a very clear picture of what these Americans sound like. The songs are well-structured, the guitar solos are very good (opting for a good composition instead of the typical look-how-fast-I-can-move-my-fingers solo) and the vocal-performance is quite nice as well. I was actually quite surprised when I read that the band has only three members!

Here's the big downside of this album though. Usually the production is the least important part of Metal Storm's rating system for me, but in this case the production is bad enough to ruin the complete CD. Sapping all of the power out of the music it makes the whole album sound really weak in general and I do sincerely hope that this band picks a different producer for their next output!

Apart from the production issues I'd say that this is an average melodic power metal release. There are some really nice parts (the very melodic ballad "Prisoner Of The World" which serves as closing track could have been really pretty with a good production!) but there are other moments which sound rather bland. After all, while there might be few bands in the USA that play this kind of music, we have them a dime-a-dozen here in central Europe.

So song-wise I'd say this band is not bad at all, but they don't qualify as one of my bands of the year either, there's nothing worth mentioning originality-wise either, but that's not what we should be expecting from the power metal scene anyway. By the way there's also a really enjoyable cover of Iron Maidens' "The Trooper" on this album.

Favourite tracks: The Power Of One, The Trooper (Iron Maiden)