SPIRAL OF FEAR

Here's an underappreciated band I didn't expect to hear from again! 9 years have passed since their last album. Well, they're back. Poverty's No Crime sits on the borderlines of power metal, hard rock and adult-oriented rock, an adult-oriented metal if you will. If there is one word to describe their style, is steady - they never go into excess and the instrumental breaks are more about team playing than a bunch of individual solos.

Spiral of Fear continues Save My Soul's heavier and darker sound, so it is more in line with the predominant style of their prog metal peers such as Vanden Plas or Threshold, but overall, this is Poverty's No Crime by the numbers - crunchy riffs and sing-along choruses mixed with introspective atmospherics. For every song here could be found a parallel from their earlier works - the cool sci-fi instrumental The Fifth Element, of example, is a direct cousin of (an even cooler) Terminal Trip off the Chemical Chaos album. Though I could wish for greater variation in sound like their earlier albums, and the vocal is processed one too often (to cover for the understandable rustiness of the singer) I'm glad they're back.