THE METAL OBSERVER

Reviewed by Alex

Forgotten Tales - The Promise

OK, imagine the following: Very modern guitars, distorted vocals, Hip-Hop-rhythms... Got it ? OK, now you know how FORGOTTEN TALES do NOT sound! Orchestral Power Metal with classical influences (via keyboard), grand melody-lines and a very good female voice, that is what the Canadians are presenting us with their self-produced debut. Here and there the name of RHAPSODY comes up in my mind, but I can just as safely say that FORGOTTEN TALES are not a copy, Sonia Pineault's voice alone ensures this. That it has grown very hard to find your own way in the sub-genre of Power Metal is natural, the more bands try their luck in one genre, the less originality you will be able to unearth.

Still FORGOTTEN TALES manage to avoid some of the worst genre-cliffs, like tralala-choruses or uniformity of their compositions, which are exchangeable with other acts. So they are moving in the usual field, which means that apart from Miss Pineault's very nice, powerful voice there is nothing to really make the band stand out, but still the compositions sound quite fresh and are well executed. In the ten songs they cover the whole spectrum and reaches very fast, double-bass-driven regions, which combined with the orchestral element join RHAPSODY, but without taking in the extremity of the Italians in the bombast-department, they stay in more "normal" regions. As the sound also is very good, one could call "The Promise" a really good debut, which doesn't have to hide from most current releases in Power Metal.

Note : 7,5/10