Customer Reviews

Evil Is Forever

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Sweden's Astral Doors turned Ronnie James Dio worship into a full-time job. "Evil is Forever" (2005) takes inspiration from Dio's work in Rainbow, Black Sabbath and his eponymous band, and throws in some Deep Purple influences for good measure.

This album begins with the speed and power of "Bride of Christ" and then proceeds to hit you with one great song after another. "Time to Rock", "Evil Is Forever", "Lionheart" and "Praise the Bones" are all engaging from the first listen. Next comes another great speed metal track, "Pull the Break" (which has more than a passing resemblance to "I Speed at Night" from The Last in Line). The first half of this CD flows so well, I was amazed at how quickly the time passed.

But an inverse bell curve appears with tracks 7 through 9. In other words, things start to drag during "Fear in Their Eyes", bottom out in "Stalingrad", and then begin to rebound with "From the Cradle to the Grave". These aren't bad songs, but they seem to lack the urgency of the ones that preceded them.

Astral Doors right themselves with the third speed metal track "The Flame" and the concluding epic "Path to Delirium".

This CD really deserves 4.5 stars. Since Amazon doesn't allow half-stars, and the previous reviewer couldn't increase his rating from 3 to 4 stars as he wished, I'll round my rating up to 5 stars.

Fans of late '70s / early '80s hard rock and metal should check out this album.

I can tell you. This is an awesome band. Great songwriting. Great Playing. Great Sound. However, the fly in the ointment just might be the unique vocal stylings of Johansson. I for one love what he did on this album but half of my headbanging friends could not get past him.

Personal favorite tracks are "from the cradle to the grave", "Path to delirium" and "fear in their eyes". After listening to this AD album I planned on buying another from these guys but have not found one that I like as much....yet.

Other bands I like, a lot, are Queensryche (The Warning in particular), Sabbath with Tony Martin (Headless Cross), Glenn Hughes (Eternal Idol?) and Dio (Mob Rules, Heaven and Hell), to name the first artists that come to mind when thinking of AD.

I bought this album because I purchased Astralism by Astral Doors and was completely blown away. However, Evil is Forever doesn't measure up nearly as well. "Lionheart" and "Pride of Christ" are my favorite songs on this album. "Time to Rock" and "Path to Delirium" are also good songs. Overall, this album is worth owning for fans of Astral Doors. I do think that it was worth my money, but people unfamiliar with the band probably shouldn't buy this album. In my opinion, Astralism is better by an order of magnitude. Get this album of you already like Astral Doors. Otherwise, go take a look at Astralism. I left a nice long review there.

-I've listened to the album a bit more since I first wrote this review. Some of the songs that I didn't care for before have started to grow on me. Now I think I would rate the album 4 stars, but I don't know if I can change my original rating. The songs that have I have begun to like more are the title track "Evil is Forever" and "Praise the Bones." "Lionheart" is getting to be one of my favorite songs right now.