ENIGMATIC: CALLING

Pagan's Mind may have an "Enigmatic Calling" but their musical agenda here couldn't be more easily digestible, offering up mostly traditional power metal fare with sufficient influence from progressive metal to add some interesting twists to proceedings. With a futuristic sheen added at points by Ronny Tegner's keyboards, I'm reminded of a mashup of the prog-leaning approach Iron Maiden took on Seventh Son of a Seventh Son with the aesthetic they adopted for Somewhere In Time, which is no bad thing. Vocalist Nils K. Rue takes the opportunity to show off some impressive range to boot, helping set Pagan's Mind ahead of the pack, but the musical backing itself is sufficiently generic that you're only likely to give this heavy rotation if you are very into the more prog-flirting end of power metal.