### Infinite Horizon: Dominion

#### 30/11/09 || GardensTale

Oh good lord, Black Bards Entertainment again… I think if you average the scores they got on here it can’t possibly surpass the outskirts of Suckville, and the 1’s and 2’s ain’t rare. Yet they keep sending us every fucking album they release for reviewing. Well, let see what this crap’s about today.

Well, someone has been listening to Barlow-era Iced Earth a lot. And some Grave Digger, too. Infinite Horizon go at their heavy/power metal with the same attitude as the above-mentioned superiors. Skip the bullshit, just go at it with good guitars, engaging melodies, gruff vocals rather than ear-piercing falsettos and… Hang on. I think a fly is buzzing in my ears. Or is that… Yes, fuck. It’s some half-assed keyboards of which I cannot imagine why they felt the need to add them. What happened there? “Hey buddy, can I fuck your girl if I let you do some synthwork in our band?” “Okay.” “Sweet! Thanks, dad!”

Don’t get me wrong. I think any instrument can add to any kind of music if used correctly. I’ve heard a saxophone in black metal before. And keyboards are one of the least rare instruments beyond the elemental drum-bass-guitars combo. There’s plenty of examples of its proper use: the new Devin Townsend record “Addicted” for instance, or to stay closer to the power metal area, the underrated keytar-sporting Raintime. Here, it doesn’t go down that way. That Iced Earth comparison? The whole down-to-earth playing, no bullshit, let the songwriting take it further? Yeah, out the window. “Dark Saga” didn’t need any fucking synths to be awesome! Then “28 Days” rolls past and it turns out the keys get only more piercing and overused as the album progresses. Further proven by “Liar”, which starts off with weirdly reverbing keys that annoy me so much I want to kick skulls in, and not in the ‘Fuck yeah, rocking shit, let’s crush some skulls WHOO’ kind of way.

And the most fucktarded thing about it all is that the rest of the music varies from average to actually pretty fucking nice! The vocals sound rather brooding and refrain almost completely from falsettos, and the rare moments he does use them amplify drama. What’s rare is beautiful they say, or some shit like that, but it’s not fucking untrue. The rest of the music is all firmly tucked between the asses of the older Iced Earth and a slower Grave Digger. It’s catchy, it’s written well, it’s not bad at all! But the god-awful keys make the whole thing repulsive.

The opening track is where it’s easiest to ignore those keys and is so far the most alluring song. Corny, sure. New and original, nope. Nice to listen to? Sure! Here it’s easiest to envision what his album could have been. But you do keep hearing the buzzing flies in the back, and they get their own solo which makes my ears bleed in the bad way, so no points there. Each and every fucking song on here is potentially decent material and the whole thing gets shot to shit thanks to the keyboards. I hope he loses all his fingers before the next album, or becomes a monk in Tibet resorting to playing the triangle or something. Just get the fuck outta this potentially decent power outfit and the next album might work its way out of Suckville.

- Information
- Released: 2009
- Label: Black Bards (lack of )Entertainment.
- Website: www.infinitehorizon.de
- Band
- Marc Lemmler: vocals
- Armin Schmidt: bass
- Christian Schmidt: drums
- Jens Hahn: guitars
- Thomas Bäcker: guitars
- Bastian Fuchs: keyboards

- Tracklist
- 01. I’m alive
- 02. God of lies
- 03. 28 days
- 04. Liar
- 05. Code of decadence
- 06. N.G.S.
- 07. Pay high fly low
- 08. Lines in the sand
- 09. Living on the edge
- 10. Oblivion