User Page: Gamemako

A significant deviation from the Sonata Arctica of old, Unia represents every  progressive leaning they ever had consolidated into one. It's the next step away from the standard power metal band they started with Eclipse.

The album begins with a good hook for fans: a fairly standard power-metal round  to begin Black and White. I must say, I do enjoy it, but it's not a whole lot of prog to go around. A little section in the middle, but mostly power metal. The ending is quite good, though. Then on to Paid in Full, another fan-service power metal track but even less progressive. For The Sake of Revenge contains some interesting lyrics, but that aside it's just another half-ballad.

Then the album gets interesting. It Won't Fade is a brilliant power-prog track, compelling both musically and lyrically.

Now, To Create A Warlike Feel deserves its own paragraph. It's an awesome power-prog song with more political overtones than any song since 1972. Well, I exaggerate, but you get the idea. It's a full-steam-ahead grilling of imperialism and political manipulation (and obviously inspired by the contemporary war in Iraq -- "Burning the fields for one flower"). And that perhaps is the reason why it was not included on every pressing of Unia: this track has absolutely nothing to do with hope ("Had we known how this ends in our defeat").

This is the meterstick by which all terrible albums will be measured. At this time in their history, Therion were just an average death metal outfit complete with a name that is merely tribute to a black metal album. The compositions on Of Darkness... are bland and uninspired, and the production is painfully bad for we audiophiles (the bass can hardly be heard, which doesn't really matter since it's not worth hearing). I would recommend listening to this one after your favorite band releases a bad album: you can always take solace that "at least it's not Of Darkness..."

Likely to be the last album I ever pre-order, Scarsick taught me a valuable lesson. Not known for consistency, PoS went way off the deep end with this one. A stinker and then some, Scarsick is PoS living up to its acronym.

At best a preview of what would come, Identity Crisis is essentially standard early punk/hardcore fare. Structurally, the music is verse-chorus 4/4 stuff throughout. The vocals are rather poor, being a blend of hardcore screams and punk-rock-style clean vocals. Everything about the album screams mediocrity. Even the lyrics are comparably weak, even making reference to anime in concert with immature angst. Not a good start. Fortunately, they progressed immeasurably with their next album.