Well, I must confess that I'm not the biggest admirer of power-metal, but I did spend a good portion of my youth listening to HELLOWEEN, BLIND GUARDIAN and so on. Although that doesn't make me an expert on the genre I'm perfectly capable of telling you if this new effort from Swedish Power Metal act FRAISE is any good.

"Siamese Conspiracy", the band's third full-length album is actually pretty enjoyable. But damn! It lasts for nearly one hour so it can be a bit tiresome, especially considering some songs are a bit similar in terms of structure and mood.

It's easy to locate their sound as somewhere between KAMELOT and perhaps SONATA ARCTICA in the more pompous moments like the bombastic "Beauty Mask", which is saturated with splendorous synths and theatrical vocalizations.

Thankfully, the band doesn't throw in too many of these cheesy moments and focus more on Traditional Heavy Metal songs that showcase a strong musicianship and a solid songwriting. Songs like the opener "Alive", "Under the Seventh Heal" and "Prophecy" reveal the more explosive side of FRAISE, merging some powerful, beefy rhythms with a heavy, hooky guitar work to provide the perfect backbone for Ola Hedman to deliver some strong vocal harmonies.

Overall, the only two things stopping this album from getting a higher score are the album length and the sameness of some tracks; otherwise "Siamise Conspiracy" would be faultless.