Customer Reviews

Marriage of Heaven & Hell

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

 

 

I've been a huge fan of Metal for most of my life, way back when Rainbow was considered heavy metal. In the past couple of years I've felt a bit alienated from it, as so many relatively recent releases in the genre just seemed to be either copying from themselves or others, or beating the same old song structures into the ground. Among these releases, even the bands that were going more for originality and advanced songwriting usually got buried by the weight of their own, histrionic convolutions, or just plain seemed to be trying to hard (Ihsahn and Opeth spring to mind). So I went through a long period of listening to classic rock, just because the music back then seemed to take more chances.

About a month ago, through communication with classic metal guitarist Jack Starr, I found myself digging into my early copies of Virgin Steele's records and relived the fun. But more importantly, I became interested in the band's later music, which I wasn't very familiar with.

I started with "Marriage of Heaven and Hell pt. 2", and after several intent listens I can relievedly proclaim that Virgin Steele has brought me back to Metal, helping me to see both how far it's been taken, and new places where I can fly past in my own writing. There is some phenomenally creative writing on these albums, and I don't care who thinks it's overblown or too hard to understand. Great writing is great writing.

Although there is an obvious Manowar influence in the music of Virgin Steele, it's more like songwriter/producer/vocalist David DeFeis took inspiration from the experimentation the former took on the "Triumph of Steel" album and ultimately blew past it in terms of both epicness and songwriting craft. In fact, the songs on "Marriage" are often as good compositionally as anything in metal, period. I listened to the album at first passively while surfing the Internet, then realized half way through that I was really missing out. Once the computer went off, and the headphones on, the intricacies and care taken with this recording started revealing themselves to me. And with repeated listens I realized that this wasn't just a great Metal album, this was great music, period.

For criticism, I'm not happy with the songs after "Prometheus", as they generally sound too much like typical sing songy affairs, very predictable and thus really suffering coming after the fascinating composition of the tracks before. But hey, the first eight tracks could have been an album by themselves, they are so good they easily push this album up to a perfect 5 star review.

I highly reccomend this album, and I am just recently experiencing the amazing rush of their "House of Atreus Act I" as well.

...and this says something, since part I is great. Both are fantastic albums, but I like this one a little bit better. Songs like 'Twilight of the Gods' and alike amaze me all the time I listen to this. Tight songwriting with great melodies, very well executed. Power metal at it's best. Excellent songs on a great album.

I was fortunate to begin my Virgin Steele odyssey with "Invictus", a nearly perfect Progressive Power Metal album, but after that I was let down by the somewhat tame "The House of Atreus Act I" so I was reluctant to journey further. However...to make a long story short, reviews of this album throughout the internet rekindled my interest in the band. Now for an explanation of the title of this review. The first 8 songs of this album are exemplary, top notch songcraft that frequently rival moments from "Invictus". But then something strange happens as tracks 9 through 12 are decidedly of the Hard Rock variety rather than Progressive Power Metal; they feel tacked onto the end to lengthen the playing time. A virtual side B, if you will. From now on I will only listen to the first eight songs as their flavor is much more to my liking than the been-there-done-that Hard Rock vibe prevalent in the remaining songs. The outro "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell revisited" closes the album with a nod to the previous release (part 1). This album (part 2) is not perfection, but for a solid eight tracks in the glorious vein of "Invictus", their heralded masterwork, one could certainly do worse.

I'm a huge fan of VS and i can say that marriage part II is one of the best albums ever!!!A pure epic,romantic barbaric record that matches equally with Manowar albums!"Crown of glory" is strong heavy metal song with great rythm helped by one of the best vocalists in this music David defeis!This album contains various of songs different from each other such as "Prometheus the fallen one" based on the Greek legend of Prometheus who helped humanity take profit of the benefits of fire and was punished for that since he was forced to live in a mountain,where he was tied up and his stomach was been eaten by an eagle each and every night,and "Emalaith" a true heavy balland with romantic frightening screaming vocals by david ,witch becomes a hard metal song with great atmospheric keybords holding an epic backround."Victory is mine" is the hit of this album containing a catchy chorus!The VS fans already own this album.For the rest of you this is a must have album along with Noble savage,age of consent and marriage part I.
After all VS were resurrected after Jack starr left the band and Edward Pursino took his place with much better results such as this.That gave the chance to David to take the lead of the group and create albums that are allready a part of metal history,something that Starr never succeeded with his solo albums like "no turning back","rock the American way" or "out of the darkness".
Sure one of the best albums ever made!!

THE best Virgin Steele album recorded. A MUST buy for any metal fan

Not the album itself,the album is brilliant!amazing stuff!crap is that I got CD-R copy with no lyrics,just printed cover!I mean what a hell? I have this album in mp3, I could burn a cd-r and print a picture myself! What I need is original cd...anyways I want my money back, I'm gonna return it today,even if I've got it just an hour ago...crap! crap! crap! shame to amazon...what's next fake sony, puma, samsung etc?