Visions Of Eden (Barbaric Remix Version)

Album review

Virgin Steele give Manowar a run for their assless leather chaps with the cover art chosen for 2006's Visions of Eden, which features vocalist David DeFeis gazing toward infinity beside a coal-black Clydesdale and wielding the biggest darn sword you'll ever lay eyes upon. Incredibly, the dramatic music within suits this imagery 100-percent, only not with Dungeons & Dragons shenanigans, but with serious Old Testament stuff, as dictated by its title. Yes, roll your eyes if you must, but you still have to give this Long Island heavy metal institution some props for sticking to their guns (or, as it were, its swords) through thick and thin over the quarter-century discreetly marked by this, their 12th studio album. Not that there's anything quiet, meek, or subtle about Visions of Eden; in fact, its epic songs may amount to Virgin Steele's most ambitious album yet! While a few of the more uniform songs ("Immortal I Stand," "The Ineffable Flame") almost approach DragonForce velocity (aka "ludicrous speed"), far be it from Virgin Steele's gentlemen headbangers to confine themselves to rote power metal gimmickry. Instead, like Savatage on steroids, the colorfully named album standout "Adorned with the Rising Cobra," runs the gamut of intensity and emotion (the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat), weaving prominent and inventive keyboard orchestrations amidst the expected six-string overkill. And like Manowar hoisting aloft a fine arts degree instead of medium-rare lamb shanks, the album-closing title track makes all this pomp and circumstance sound positively justified: refined, classy, regal. Meanwhile, the deceptively named "Angel of Death" is actually a melancholy ballad, and "God Above God" takes things one step further into quasi-AOR territory, admittedly making yet another late album softy, "When Dusk Fell," comparatively unwelcome. But even though DeFeis' histrionic performance (and rampant ego, hello!), with his Freddie Mercury falsettos on "Bonedust" and his agonized delivery on "Black Light on Black," can still land him in trouble now and then, they ultimately fit with the operatic theatricality and biblical subject matter within. Plus, let's face it, it's a little too late to expect DeFeis and his Virgin Steele bandmates to start apologizing for who they are. Rather, leave the apologizing to Adam, Eve, and the other merry characters populating Visions of Eden; after all, in metal as in battle -- unlike scripture -- there can be no regret!

© Eduardo Rivadavia /TiVo