STONELAKEare not new in town, their strong musical roots were planted back in the mid 80's only to rise again after several lineup changes. "Marching On Timeless Tales" is their fifth album and the heaviest to date. I can describe STONELAKE as a mix of the new HELLOWEEN with a taste JUDAS PRIEST, at least where the vocals are concerned, while serving a melodic atmosphere of Heavy Metal due to the contributions of the keyboards lines.

"Red Canyon", the opening track, blazoned with a sharp sound of heavy guitar riffs followed by melodic high note singing. The chorus on this one was a powerful and bombastic point, especially while it laid on the oriental style keyboards. I think that thanks for the amazing heavy riffs, this was their best track in the album. The second track, "Liar", combined some progressive parts along with Heavy / Power Metal. I believe that you would remain speechless after you would listen to the quality high note chanting of the singer Peter Grundström.

However, with those two as shining stars, I wasn't that amazed from the rest of the tracklist. It's not about listening to this kind of stuff in the past, yet it is just that I haven't drawn the same kind of enthusiasm as the first two amplified. I wished that all the songs were in the same level of their opening track and its follower, unfortunately I felt as if the rest of the songs were a selection of higher moments along with a lot more low quality mementos. For example, on "Fool With No Denial", STONELAKE wrote, for what I believed to be, their strongest guitar riff ever and suddenly it stopped in favor of a relaxing keyboard verse that just ruined the powerful drive that opened the song. On some of their songs I heard powerful choruses and less strong stanzas and vice versa like on "Lay Down The War" which has a strong opening that continued until the dull chorus. Sometimes there was a feeling that the keyboards were too much in the front of the mix while the true Heavy Metal spirit was pushed back to a rather dark atmosphere.

STONELAKE's strongest point is the singer. Their material is good but only one song really stood to become an unbreakable part of my mind.