Crystal Viper-Legends

AFM
2011

Poland's traditional metal/power metal outfit Crystal Viper returns with their third studio effort. This album came out in Europe back in the fall, but won't out until February here in the states courtesy of AFM records. This is slick, but extremely well-written Euro-metal with impressive female vocals and more crunching riffs than you can shake a stick at. Some of the songs have very direct influences. For example "Blood of the heroes" is reminiscent of Keeper of the seven keys-era Helloween while "Ghost Ship" is pure late 80's-early 90's Running Wild. Many of the others are a mixture of those two bands plus Iron Maiden, Gamma Ray and Grave Digger. The also pay tribute to another influence as they cover Accept's underrated "TV war".The phrase nothing new is bound to come into your mind during this album, but that phrase will quickly get kicked to curb once you here this whole album. New or not doesn't matter because this band has all the licks and notes down as well as anyone who is or has done this style. The one word that comes to mind upon hearing this album is "flow" because they don't wait they just push ahead and every element of this album flows along in spectacular fashion. Because of that approach this is album where you here it once and you feel like you have known it for years. Although that won't stop you from playing it over and over. Quite the opposite because you will want to hear more and more of "Legends". A shame that we on this side of the pond had to wait a few extra months for it come out, but hey it's worth the wait.