Connor Brouwers is a man with a dream of making a Metal Opera. Growing up with such bands as Aventasia, Hammerfall, and Helloween, epic Power Metal was his love and passion and he dreamed of making his own mark on the Symphonic Metal Landscape. During the Covid years, Connor had time to set about fully producing his dream. With an array of singers (including Tim Ripper Owens ex Judas Priest and Iced Earth), Call of Eternity is definitely a homage to the Symphonic Power Metal genre. Clean, powerful vocals and strong lead guitar solos blazing away, Call of Eternity leads us through the tale of Clauris Glarion, (a knight in the fictional land of Fantarion).

The album mixes everything Power Metal usually has in terms of strong orchestration and choirs of background singers including operatic females and power Baritones. On paper it seems to have everything necessary to land itself with the epics of the genre such as Aventasia's Metal Opera, Leaves Eyes King of Kings, or Epica Requiem for the Indifferent. The problem is it never comes close to any of those. While I appreciate the clear and obvious work and labor that was needed to layer all the parts together, (allowing the epic theatrical overall sound), as well as the lyrics which are (as is normal for Power Metal) loud, clear, clean, and beautifully crafted to sound majestic in scale. Even with all that said, I just never became invested in the story. It was like reading a book but never immersing yourself in it.

A few of the tracks rose about this, The Legend of the Warrior had a nice drum track throughout and mixed male and female vocal orchestration in a way that raised me somewhat while listening to it, while Land of New Horizons evoked a message that seemed to come as much from Brouwers possible desire for the world to emerge from its pandemic lockdown and stretch once more into the future "New Horizons" as much as how it fits into the tale of the album itself. In summation, this was a labor of love (according to Brouwers bio anyway), and in that I am glad he put his vision to reality with this release, but I fall short of really recommending it. We are all on a quest but sometimes the destination is not all we hoped it would be.