Heavenly - Sign of the Winner



1. Break the Silence (4:01) 2. Destiny (6:59) 3. Sign of the Winner (4:05) 4. The World Will Be Better (6:54) 5. Condemned to Die (6:15) 6. The Angel (2:06) 7. Still Believe (5:02) 8. The Sandman (4:43) 9. Words of Change (5:06) 10. Until the End (8:52)

Total Running Time: 54:03



Yawn. Really, I'm amazed at how the Euro power metal movement keeps growing and growing with what seems to be an infinite amount of bands that simply have nothing new to offer to the scene. On one hand, you have bands like Angra and Helloween, which keep changing with every album in order to stay fresh; and on the other, you have about a million others who choose to rehash the same tired ideas, melodies, and bullet speeds. What's worse, these bands are rehashing ideas that actually belong to others, Helloween and its Keeper of the Seven Keys albums being the mold by which they create "their" sound.

It thus came as no surprise when Heavenly's sophomore effort, Sign of the Winner, bored the hell out of me. Yes, the music has that German power metal majesty to it, the band is one tight mother, and the arrangements are grandiose and polished, but the whole thing is just so unoriginal that one is able to know exactly what's coming next, and to make matters worse, to conjure other albums where it has been done exactly the same way before. Picture Helloween, Gamma Ray, and a bit of both Angra and Rhapsody in French wedlock and this is what you get: a bunch of cliché-ridden songs that reek of predictability. I mean, even singer Ben Sotto sounds like a cross between André Matos and the legendary Michael Kiske, except for the fact that he also has a uniquely annoying falsetto.

It is completely beyond my grasp why bands such as this manage to actually garner such wide acclaim when all they're really doing is ripping off everything that has been done before already in the Euro power metal scene. Alright, so it's epic, and well-arranged, and what not, but it's also completely dull, featuring only a couple of musical passages that are actually worth listening to. Those that like their power metal to remain completely formulaic and rejoice in finding yet another band that sounds exactly the same will probably enjoy Sign of the Winner. Me, I'll hold on to my Keeper of the Seven Keys and Rage albums and cry while I drink away my misery…

-by Marcelo Silveyra

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