If there's one thing that the Germans have always been good at in the music scene it's creating some sweet sounding Rock and Metal music, as they have made some pretty good heavy hitting albums. I heard quite a few of these in 2015 and there were a lot I liked and the same is also true for 2014, so can this year be just as good for the German Rock and Metal scene? Let us find out by meeting a group called MILLARIUM.

Formed in 2009 in Hannover, Germany, MILLARIUM released an EP in 2012 entitled "Rise High", and now 3 years later, it's time for their first full-length album to be released and that is what we get with "First Blood Running", so let us review it and see what it is like, shall we?

Clocking it at around 44 minutes, across 10 songs, the debut full-length studio album from MILLARIUM starts off with a short instrumental called "The Phoenix", before launching into the first vocal song on the album, which in this instance, is the title track. After that, we have eight more tracks of German Heavy Metal numbers ranging from the insane "Sweet Revenge" and "Hope and Misery", the crazy "Insidious", the dark and moody "Long Forgotten" and the relaxing and somber closing song, "Born to Be Wild".

With the exception of the last song, the music on this album consists of heavy shredding guitars, wild vocals, and pounding rhythms from the bass and drums. Unfortunately, I think they're focused on being too wild and crazy, as at times the melodies can clash resulting in some very messy sounding songs. This, coupled with the production that sounds very cheap and second rate, doesn't really make the music sound any better.

I do appreciate what the band was aiming for with the music on this album, and in a way, it does kind of work, but as a whole, I wasn't really impressed. The only song I found good merit in was the last song, as its just vocals and an acoustic guitar singing a slow and relaxing song, which I enjoyed resulting in the only song on this album that I liked.

Bottom line, I didn't really find the debut full-length studio album from MILLARIUM to be anything special. The songs I do kind of appreciate because of what the band were aiming for with them, but on a whole, I wasn't really all that impressed, as there's a lot wrong with it that puts me off.<