EP review : RHAPSODY OF FIRE – I’ll Be Your Hero

AFM Records [Release date 04.06.21]

There’s no band more adept at sucking us into their fantasy world of bombastic, exhuberant Metal than Champions League Melodic Metal band, Rhapsody Of Fire.

This is one of those rarities we call an EP. An Extended Play. Longer than a “single”, shorter than an “LP”. A potboiler. A Marketing ploy to keep our interest alive.
And it works.

It centres on the title track ‘I’ll Be Your Hero’, a familiar phrase in Metal’s world of inflated sentiments. Indeed the song is imbued with a sense of heroism and escape, a romanticised epic, structured on a speeding riff, a rushing keyboard motif, a sinuous melody and, well… you have to say this about RoF, they don’t overdo it. They get it just right.

The instruments and the arrangements create an aural landscape to help us understand what is going on in the narrative. It’s a joy to listen to. If ever bombastic metal could be described as elegant and restrained, this is it.

The “re-recorded” version of ‘Where Dragons Fly’ emphasises this approach. A Metal madrigal for lovers of the theatrical. It’s a bit twee at times, but mostly it’s simply sweet where it could easily have given in to saccharin.

A couple of live tracks, ‘Rain Of Fury’ and ‘The Courage To Forgive’, from the band’s 2019 ‘Eighth Mountain’ tour are timely reminders that they can do all this on stage without missing a beat. And if nothing else, four different language versions of ‘The Wind, The Rain and The Moon’ confirm the band’s popularity across Europe.***1/2

Review by Brian McGowan

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Power Plays w/c 9 December 2024

In this sequence we play ‘The Best of 2024′ GRTR! reviewer selections

Featured Albums w/c 9 December 2024

09:00-12:00 The Best of 2024 (Melodic Rock)
12:00-13:00 The Best of 2003-2024 (Melodic Hard Rock)
14:00-16:00 The Best of 2024 (Singer Songwriter)