Customer Reviews

Divine Invitation

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Born out of fact some people (most likely those in the band's native country of Finland) where having trouble finding the band's first two releases ("Invitation" and "Divinity") "Divine Invitation" contains the 5 "best" tracks from those albums and backs them with tracks from the band's first two demo releases "Sleeping Visions" and "Feed the Fire." As one would expect with the "best of" section, the word "best" basically means "crapshoot" to anyone familiar with the band's music. I can't honestly see how you'd skip over a track like "Stain on the Switchblade" from Divinity or "Wrath of a Warchild" from Invitation. Still, both of those albums are somewhat peculiar in what they offer, making the clear-cut winners from their track lists somewhat hard to discern.

Tracks 11 and 12 present the only new material with a (yet another) singer which makes for the fifth singer in the band's rather short history (four of which can be heard here); "Ball & Chain" is pretty interesting in that it gives one a glimpse at the rock direction the band took up for 2009's Unholy.

The demo portion of the disc beyond the above is interesting and surprisingly noteworthy for all the wrong reasons. Some of the demos (the 2002 ones) are actually better than the final/finished versions that actually ended up on Invitation. For example, check out "Unicorn (2002 Demo)" and then check out the album version. Geez, did they really need to bog down a good song to such a point? It's downright ironic how for the last eight years I thought I was listening to the album version on a dubbed CD of mine while I was actually listening to the demo version the whole time! The same situation applies for a few other songs although Unicorn is the real anomaly.

Containing demos that are often better than the finished product, a hit and miss "best of" selection and two, rather skimpy additions, I can't really suggest "Divine Invitation" as a starting point for new listeners. There are some good songs, but I'd suggest 2006's "The Fallen Empire" as anyone's first Altaria disc.