Metal Reviews

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I do not doubt the cheesiness of this band, but for a sub category? I think that's a little rude.

Speaking as another fan of Skylark since 1997 who also feels that Dragons Secrets represented their peak, I have to agree with every point in this review. Without Kiara, I could get past the other problems and probably rate it their best material in 8 years. Fabio Dozzo is far from the best singer in metal, but Kiara is mediocre at best, with an even thicker accent. I hesitate to make accusations without any backing evidence, but my strong suspicion is that she got the job more for looks than talent. Just check out the shameless pics of her in a bikini that appear on the band's Japanese fansite belzebu.net, which seem to be official Skylark press photos. That said, Fairytales still beats Wings by a longshot, and the two final tracks with Fabio are, just as the review notes, the closest thing to classic Skylark to be heard since 1997.

PS - For a brilliant cover of Moonlight Shadow, check out the hidden bonus track on Suidakra's 2005 release 'Command to Charge.'

I have to agree with the "cheesy" comment, also the line "Since this is Skylark’s sixth or seventh album..." kind of takes away from the credibility of this review, don't you think? Shouldn't you know exactly how many albums this band has released?

I only have their Wings album and I remember thinking the production was pretty bad, or at a minimum the guitars were very weak. And they tried to pull off a Def Leppard (my favorite band) cover and failed like most bands do. It could have been great, but when you can't even get the lyrics correct you're off to a bad start.

I really liked that the review matched the score, I think that's always important.

However, I think this is a great CD! :shock: Skylark is all about melody, and this CD really excels... coupled with a much better production than their previous CD, I'm quite happy with this. I do wish the 2 vocalists sang together though (duet style, whatever), rather than each of them having their own songs. 8)
My fellow colleague David is currently writing a full review for this, so those of you who frequent the MCDR site will get a second opinion soon.




I'm pretty sure the band combined 2 EPs and released a full-length titled 'After the storm' early on, so there's some confusion as to the number of actual full-length CDs.

I'll probably give this a listen as I've heard the rest of their discography and I'm curious. I think Skylark's sound was at it's best in Gates of Heaven and Antonini's soloalbum, wich are also the only albums I own.

About cheesy, I won't disagree with that. And about bad singer, I can't really disagree with that either... their albums were interesting though, perhaps because they were flawed. But listening to Wings, there just isn't anything there to give a damn about. I don't know... perhaps this one will be better.

Blah, seems like no one is truly fond of Fabio Dozzo's great vocals :evil: I've been a huge fan of them since -98 and own all of their albums (except the last 2 coz my wantlist is loooooong).

I've never had any issues with the production on their albums: the first one was a combination of their first 2 EPs so you couldn't except much but the sound was still satisfactory, the remastered Dragon's Secrets has a very solid and clear production, no problems there if u don't mind the lack of bass, I recall the Eddy Antonini solo album had a more powerful production but the lack of consistency hurt it a bit :/ Then the three albums after that have all had very good solid sound, nothing to nitpick about. I doubt the last 2 have any worse sound? I hope not... o_0
But then again if u listen to Edguy and Gamma Ray all day long and then switch to Skylark disc, u might notice some drop in quality and think it's bad sounding? Which is not true. Speaking in numbers the former albums might have a production worth of 10 but almost all Skylark albums have at least a solid 8

And I reeeeeally like Fabio Dozzo's singing, he has always been one my favorites. But I'd just hope he'd use more of his higher register like back in the day :( coz he's SO good at it \m/
And I never had any problems with whatever accent he might have, maybe americans have a bigger problem with it (and almost any Italian singer) coz it's their native language.