THE TRAINING

"The Training" is a great album and a good first album from Finnish band King of Sweden; I am curious to see what else they will release in the future. I really enjoy the guitar phrases and the overall feel of the album. The style is easy to listen and jam to and is pretty calm overall; there are also faster/less calm parts of this album such as the first song.

"Dreaming About the Emerald" is a great instrumental opening song for this album. It is a fairly simple track but does a good job of opening up the feel of the album as a whole. The drumming sounds really great. The next track, "Two Thieves", is the longest song of the album at about 13 minutes. The rhythm on this song is really great and easy to jam to and the time signature changes from 3/4 to 4/4 for most of the song. The guitar solos in the beginning of the song are good. The only problem I have with this track is the singing. It doesn't sound phenomenal but I think it's just the fact that English is probably not his first language. "In the House of a Witch" is the next song on the album and is a calm instrumental after the less calm end to "Two Thieves". This is also the shortest song on the album at 2:23. The next song "The Imprisonment" is another calm song with singing. The saxophone solo is also good. The next song, "Help Arrives", is a more upbeat tune and a really good song on the album. The last song is called "And the Last Enemy to be Destroyed is Mathematics". It has a similar feeling to "Help Arrives".

Overall, "The Training" is a really good debut album for the Finnish band. It combines calm ballads with upbeat rock and it is hard to lose interest while listening to the album, even though there is a lot of repetition in riffs.