THE PROMISE

Hey hey. Now this is interesting. Finally, a band from where I come from. Forgotten Tales is straight from the frozen hood of Quebec City. And I don't wanna brag, but anybody who comes from there knows that Quebec City is THE place where metal reigns as supreme musical king.

Since the late 70's throughout the 80's, 90's and Y2K, Quebec has been the castle of metal in every form. Iron Maiden, Ozzy Osbourne, AC/DC, Motley Crue, Guns n' Roses, Judas Priest, Rush, Kiss, Van Halen, Joe Satriani, Dream Theater and of course, the Kings of Kings....Metallica. Metallica was so popular in the Quebec City region, it's name became sacred in the thousands of headbanging hearts. I, for instance, do not share the taste of heavy metal. BUT! because of my hickville high school, I got dipped in metal so often and at such a repetitive way that our feet stomps instantly at the sound of Back in Black, Master of Puppets or Run to the Hill.

And now, graduating from the metal school with bright colors, Forgotten Tales is sharing some of their primo work with us. Primo in the terms of musicianship, because they pass the test with a hand tied in the back. Expect, of course, the solid double bass drum, heavy, crunchy and sharp guitar riffs but also delicate and almost baroque style keyboard work by my college mate: Fred 'Bob's Fat Christmas' Desroches. I know this is name dropping, but hey, that's MY 15 seconds of glory (good job man!).

They share a taste for medieval dragon slaying stuff, which is fine with me. But what strucked me instantly is the catchyness of many tracks. I mean the song Word of Truth has benn litteraly carved in my head after the second listening. Which is kinda rare when complexity (plenty in here) is implicated. Pineault's voice is clear and powerful, but shouldn't been too tamed in studio. She has a certain vocal power that should benefit better production. But this is minor criticism.

Of course not a classic of the genre, but has the opinion of many friends, deserves a fair place in your collection right beside Symphony X, Rhapsody, HammerFall or Sonata Artica.

Forgotten Tales is a canadian band who plays melodic power metal with prog metal leanings, less prog on first album - The promis from 2001, and more prog on their second one. Now this album brings nothing new in the genre , but is well composed, well performed and above all is not boring at all. The musicianship is good delivering some intristing guitar chops over a powerfull voice of Sonia Pineault. So all in all a good album, a good debut, but something still is not moveing for them, that something is in my opinion they don't have a major label under their wings, as a independed band is hard to promote properly your stuff and made some noise in this prog metal jungle, this thing still happening with their second album. Now this been said , the best pieces are: Far away - a midtempo piece where we can see how great voice has this Sonia, very powerfull in style of Lana Lane or Sabine Edelbacher from Edenbridge and the title track The promise, the rest are ok. So a good album with midtempo pieces, fast ones with nervous guitar riifs, and a pleasent voice among them. 3 star for this debut, their second one will be much better and variated.