Serious Black : "Mirrorworld"

Sure there is shredding and the drummer is on it . The vocals are rather bland yodels with little  in the way balls to them. It has the trappings of metal without being heavy.  "Heart Broken" soul is the first song on here that really connects and it has riffs that sounds recycled Dio. The verses are pretty poppy, in more of a 80's. Aldo Nova fans would think this is metal. The pop metal continues on "Dying Hearts" that reminds me of some of H.I.M 's happier moments. At this point I would be reluctant to call this power-metal as it has more in common with the more radio friendly days of hair metal. The songs are about the length of your average radio rock song though the try to cram as much shredding into "You Are Not Alone" which comes across like Symphony X lite.

When power metal works for me , which becomes on an increasingly less frequent basis it is because there is a darker element to it and the cheese factor is dialed down in a way that doesn't make it sound too happy like Europe. There is enough of a hook to the chorus to make the title track not suck. I downloaded some deluxe version of this album, but for the purpose of this review I am only counting the songs that are not listed as bonus tracks for the sake of rating this album. "State of My Despair" is your typical bland hard rock fluffed up by the guitar. "the Unborn Never Dies" has a little more in the way of yodeling, and is faster but it's no heavier than the song before it and if we are supposed to be making some form of metal here then something needs to be heavy.

So I'll give this album a 6 as it has it's moments if you are feeling nostalgic for middle of the road eighties rock that mistakes hard rock with an emphasis on solos for metal. With few exceptions this type of thing is rarely heavy enough to be metal, and is tailored to give kids that got picked on in high school for their 20 sided dice the illusion of being into metal , where if they were really into metal they would have been listening to Morbid Angel and Celtic Frost, but they are pussies so unable to take anything heavier than this.