Formed just over a decade ago in Oberlangen, Germany, Power Metallers STORM OF WIND released their debut full length album "The Total Glorification" in the winter of 2017. Right off the bat from looking at the heroic looking artwork, tipping hats to the likes of KISS, and the very unsual (and frankly off-putting) tracklisting of which every single tracked is named "something of something", I get the impression that I may be looking at a parody album to almost pick fun at bands like MANOWAR etc make light-heartedness of cliches surrounding some power metal bands of that style. But I'm a guy who is serious about music and aren't overly fond of mockeries or parodies so I did some digging at it seemed to be that this band are a totally serious original band. So with an open mind and a little skepticism I dive in to this hour long debut.

"Dawn Of Glory" opens up with the sound of wind, fading in with a really pleasent acoustic guitar melody, which is then sadly ruined by a "Once upon a time..." narration reminiscent of the work Sir Christopher Lee did on a few of the older RHAPSODY albums... only delivered a lot worse and sounds very cringey. This narration style of vocals comes and goes a couple of times within the album and to my ears just doesn't sound right and really pulls you out of the listening experience. but that's just me. Once "Metal Of Steel" kicks in with its epic riffs and majestic synths, you really start to get into things. One thing that stands out the strongest is the production quality of the instruments; everything is crisp, clear and mixed very well!

This album has the potential to be something pretty spectacular because the music throughout, for the most part, is really entertaining... In no way anything that is ground breaking or new; but the riffs are strong, the melodies are anthemic and Tommy Gun did a great job with the orchestration on this record. But at the same time the song titles, lyrical content and vocal delivery are what holds this album back and actually make it quite difficult to listen to for the most part, a lot of the lyrics here are just so ridiculous and cringey and for me that is a big problem. Which brings me back to my earlier statement about parody music... If you are a person who can see this as a parody and listen to it ironically, you may get a good few laughs out of it and at the same time really enjoy the music on display, a good way to put it would be to say that STORM OF WIND are to Power Metal what STEEL PANTHER are to Glam Metal; Talented musicians mirroring the works of big name bands whilst adding ridiculous, over-the-top lyrics and augmenting the stereotypical traits of the genres lyrical content. As I said, this isn't necasserily a bad album, the music is excellent, but on the contrary for me personally, the lyrics left me with my head in my hands throughout the majority of this record.