ASCENSION Far Beyond The Stars

Emerging from Aberdeen, at the foot of the Scottish Highlands, comes Ascension, a five man strong melodic power metal band with their debut album. My first reaction after having heard ´Somewhere back in time´, the opening track of the album was something like; ”What the heck, is this Dragonforce in disguise or something?”. Well it´s not, but the similarities are definitely there both when it comes to vocalist Rick Carnie´s voice, the structure of the songs and the blistering fast guitar riffs and solos from Stuart Docherty and Fraser Edwards. The good thing is that the guys are not trying to hide the fact that Dragonforce alongside Helloween, Gamma Ray and Hammerfall are among their most important sources for inspiration. The important thing about this album though is that Ascension proves their abilities as songwriters, this is happy melodic power metal just as it was meant to sound. Yes, we have heard it all before, but as long as ´Far beyond the stars´get me in a good mood I couldn´t care less. Not all songs are equally interesting. ´The silver tide´ for instance is a mid tempo track that serves the purpose of creating variation but looking at it isolated it falls through. My favorite tracks on the album are ´Somewhere back in time´, ´Blackthorne´ and ´Moongate. As a bonus track Ascension have recorded a cover version of the Roxette song ´Listen to your heart´, it sounds ok, nothing more and nothing less. If you can identify yourself with some of the bands mentioned above you should definitely check out ´Far beyond the stars´, if not you probably have better things to do.

Discography:

´Far beyond The Stars´ 2013