At the Heart of Wintervale – Twilight Force

Any longtime power metal fan will readily admit the genre has run its course long ago. There just isn’t much left to explore within the genre that hasn’t been done before. To be fair, that’s also not necessarily a bad thing as evidenced by Fellowship and Blind Guardian’s releases last year. But it also places these bands in a difficult situation: you can’t push the envelope in a genre that peaked decades ago and it’s quite difficult to emulate older sounds without sounding contrived. Twilight Force sort of falls into this trap on At the Heart of Wintervale as they hesitate to commit to a singular vision. On one hand, their emulation of 90s power metal melodies and riffs definitely bring forth the nostalgia of Dragonforce and Rhapsody. Even borrowing elements of speed metal with their solos on songs like “Highlands of the Elder Dragon”, Twilight Force manages to extract and distill the best aspects of the power metal formula. But although the technical part of the album is strong, it’s never more than a formulaic approach to the genre.

You have to hand it to them, Twilight Force are pretty good at what they set out to do. The galloping drums, soaring choruses, melodic riffing, and maximalist arrangements transport you into their tale of epic fantasy. The ripping opener “Twilight Force” sets a solid foundation for the album as it introduces a story of legendary heroes taking the powers of crystals to defeat evil. The lyrics are par for the course of power metal but the harmonized singing and blood-pumping instrumentation help power it through. On “Dragonborn”, the lightweight sting intro bleeds into the recurring melody and stamping percussion. Even the quieter moments like “A Familiar Moment” takes acoustic guitars and flutes to evoke imagery of taverns and dense forestry. The worldbuilding they accomplish on At the Heart of Wintervale is impressive and with such uplifting sounds, it’s easy to fall into its groove.

At the same time though, there’s not enough consistency to keep it from being generic power metal. The 10-minute closer “The Last Crystal Bearer” should be a heroic conclusion to the tale but it ends up being a meandering, forgettable mess. “Skynights of Aldaria” is indistinguishable from literally any cheesy 90s power metal song that’s been lost to the winds. The good ideas on the front half of the album don’t translate into anything meaningful towards its latter half. Twilight Force always seems to have a few interesting ideas and the rest of the ones are half-baked fillers. I’ve disliked the phrase “Disney Power Metal” because it’s a poor criticism of the genre’s cheesy tendencies but I think it’s pretty apt here. At the Heart of Wintervale does feel like the Disneyfication of the genre at its worst simply because it’s devoid of heart. It mostly follows a rigid recipe that doesn’t deviate from its set ideas. On “Sunlight Knight”, the pounding solos evolve into a beach jam that sounds straight out of Lilo & Stitch complete with marimbas. The whiplash to go from power metal to chilling in the sun is insane but I suppose that’s what they meant by sunlight knight. Regardless, these ideas rarely pay off in the way Twilight Force thinks they will. By the time they’ve returned to their formulaic approach, it feels like a completely different song. By not committing to a focused vision, they have the worst of both worlds: a power metal album that doesn’t reach the heights of its predecessors nor does its surface-level concepts prove to be anything interesting.

Must Listens: Twilight Force, At the Heart of Wintervale, Highlands of the Elder Dragon

58/100

About the Author

Jeff

I turned my incoherent ramblings on music, anime, and video games into an entire blog.

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