Mega riffy power metal is in kind of a dead ball era right now. The heyday of Persuader has long passed, and so Dire Peril is a welcome addition to the growing cabal of bands bringing their fastest and meanest to a genre so commonly derided for being flowery and wimpy. This is a two-man collaboration between the guitarist/songwriter of Helion Prime and vocalist of Judicator, two bands that have made waves in the scene in recent years that, for whatever reason, I just completely neglected to ever really give a chance. So before truly giving this album an attentive listen, I dedicated myself to checking out the two associated bands' discographies, and I can sum them up in one sentence. Helion Prime is a very standard power metal band with a great debut and followup single followed by a very uninteresting sophomore, and Judicator had a bit of a shaky start with their first few albums doing very little for me, but really coming into their own on their latest two, with The Last Emperor just straight up being the true bearer of the torch dropped by Blind Guardian in the early 00s, which was subsequently picked up and dropped again by Persuader a few years ago.
So enter Dire Peril, a band created by the minds behind one decent band and one great one, and what they've produced sounds like a very logical combination of the two bands with a huge splash of Iced Earth as well. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that Iced Earth is the largest influence here on the whole, with the Schaffer-approved triplet gallops at insanely high speeds making up a good portion of the better riffs on The Extraterrestrial Compendium. I suppose you could say then that logically this sounds more like Demons and Wizards and I guess you wouldn't exactly be wrong, but they're not the one that pops into my head right away.
The problem is that... well, anybody who has heard Iced Earth before knows that they're the kings of stretching a few great ideas out to marathon lengths since they fill each album up with one great idea and try to milk it as long as possible. Dire Peril isn't immune to this tendency, because this album is way too long. There is no reason this should break 65 minutes like it does, you could shave four or five songs off of this and it'd be an almost infinitely more enjoyable experience. This is actually a great representative for my claim that modern power metal can routinely pump out great songs but consistently fails to deliver fully great albums, because the best songs here are incredibly good. "Hunter Culture" is an incredible opener just oozing adrenaline and attitude, tracks like "Roughnecks", "Enemy Mine", and "Total Recall" aren't too far behind, "Heart of the Furyan" is a little bit less explosive but it still great, and "The Visitor" is an excellent power ballad. But beyond that? Ehhhh, there's not much to really recommend. They could have completely done away with uninteresting non-songs like "Queen of the Galaxy" or "Always Right Here", and some of the longer songs like "Blood on the Ice" and "Journey Beyond the Stars" could have been shaved down measurably to take out some of the more meandering passages. The remaining songs are summed up best as "inoffensive and decent". There's just so much content on here and only a third of it is really worth preserving in its finalized state. With some edits some other songs could've been better and some are just fundamentally boring, and that's a shame because, like I said, the good songs are fantastic and they feel wasted on an album that surrounds them with uninteresting blandness.
"Wasted potential" is a great phrase for The Extraterrestrial Compendium because an entire album full of tracks like "Hunter Culture" and "Roughnecks" could easily piss on the rest of the scene from a great height, but Ashcraft seems either hesitant or incapable of just going all out the whole time. He isn't nearly as good at writing catchy hooks as he needs to be for as much mid-paced vocal driven material on this album, no matter how great of a singer Yelland is. This really didn't need to be twelve tracks long and could've have worked much better with a more succinct eight. All of the parts are here, they just aren't put together particularly well. I'll leave it with a positive score because the good parts are super good, but there's a shitload of room for improvement here.
RATING: 57%
Just saw your comment o'er on Encyclopadeia Metallica and wanted to say that I disagree with your assessment, but the reason why I disagree is interesting: Almost every song you said that you liked (with the exception of two) I disliked, while every song you disliked and called dull or "non-songs," I enjoyed.
ReplyDeleteI think it's possible that this album actually just isn't for you. You seem like someone who would thumb your nose up at the melodic hooks of Dragonforce, and well, this is, after all, power metal. It's basically Broadway-musical-metal.
Yet, my statement above cannot be correct, because in your own review, you state that the writer of these songs "Isn't good enough at writing catchy melodies" to warrant as many mid-paced, vocal-driven songs. . . which is interesting, because I agree with you insofar as there are several hum-drum melodies on this album, namely Hunter Culture, Planet Preservation, Total Recall, Roughnecks and Heart of Furyan. (Three of which are the songs you liked!)
So in summary, I think saying the band is "good" or "bad" at whatever isn't really accurate, since you and I both have entirely differences senses of melody. Maybe the band just has a different sense of melody than us (or a mix of both of our senses of melody.)
The subjectivity of musical tastes is in full force here, I think.