Nothing like Power Metal to remind you how much you don't care for Power Metal. Yeah, this review is going to be negative and unhappy, so prepare yourself. No, I didn't really find much appealing about this album. So allow me to dance around the subject and make terrible jokes at the music's expense without really saying why I didn't like it in plain English.

I know it sees that, to be a true Metalhead, than one must absolutely love allMetal music. Well, fuck that. A true Metalhead knows to discriminate between the good bands and the shitty ones - without it we would have no sense of context or comparison. Now, when people ask me which subgenre of Metal is my personal favourite, I struggle to come up with an answer. And that is because my favourite metal bands all seem to be able to bridge multiple subgenres and make it sound like something fairly unique and worth listening to over and over again.

The problem with something like IRON MASK is that it completely falls in the category of Power Metal. Sure, it is epic, and the musicians are all talented individuals, and that is why I won't just insult them. Yes, they are skilled - no doubts there. Also, while we are on this subject, I'd like to dispel something that has bothered me for some time. People like to use the term "epic" like it is a positive description of something meaning "really fuckin' good". It's not. Epic just means something is large, on a grand scale, and usually complex. It has no inherently positive meaning. So saying something was "fuckin' epic" is just like saying it was "fuckin' big". So stop it.

Also, I need to take another paragraph to mention once again my dislike for all things keyboard. I don't like, have never liked, and never will like the sound of it. It always feels completely out of place and couldn't be cheesier if you drowned the keyboardist in three hundred pounds of expired mozzarella. Stop that, too.

So, all in, I walk away with little positive reaction, I've heard plenty of musicians who were just as skilled, but wrote pieces that didn't sound so goddamned lame. Sorry if that angers or annoys you. But when I burst into laughter over some of the lyrical lines, I question if they are trying to be tongue-in-cheek, or if they are genuinely serious. It doesn't really matter, because it sucks either way.