Inishmore - Three Colors Black
Self released
Melodic Power Metal
13 songs (70:19)
Release year: 2004
Inishmore
Reviewed by Jason

Hailing from the land of Samael and delicious Swiss chocolate, Inishmore are what you would consider your standard and straight-up melodic Power metal act. Delivering a strong dose of metal in the vein of bands such as Mob Rules and Hammerfall, the band’s third self-produced effort, Three Colors Black, is a fairy solid release whose self production should be praised but whose music is fairly simple and run of the mill.

Instead of following the same path as most of their Power Metal counterparts in pushing the limits of technicality and originality, Inishmore stays rather “oldschool” by playing tunes that are more meant for singing along than playing the air guitar to. Songs like Iron Eagle and Sorrow and Pain are melodious, repetitive, and catchy enough to stick in your brain and have you humming the chorus hours after you stopped spinning the disc. To compliment their speedy and up-beat tunes, Inishmore add some flavor to the album by adding what I can best describe as church chanting. Though I wouldn’t call these chants divine, I can definitely say that they remind me of what you would get if a barbershop quartet would suddenly decided to join the church choir. Every time the chanting begins, I can’t help myself from picturing monks singing in red and white pinstripe robes; like a sort of Gregorian barbershop Quartet… creepy.

Just like bands such as Avantasia and Evil Masquerade, Inishmore incorporate the whole theatrical or operatic element which is composed of 4 acts and vocal duels between lead vocalist Ramin Dänzer and an unnamed female singer. Both vocalists are quite talented and succeed at pulling off the whole theatrical thing tastefully. Though the vocals and guitars have moments in which their true talents shine, the same can’t be said about Ramin Dänzer’s brother Jonas, whose drumming breaches the limits of bland and serves merely as a background more than anything else. Throughout the whole album, Jona switches between boring double pedals and basic beats seldom incorporating a drum roll or even a beat change-up, thus, making this the primary weak point of Three Colors Black.

The most impressive aspect of this album is the fabulous self-production which tends to be uncommon in esoteric groups of this sort. All the sound effects, instruments, vocals, solos and synths are woven neatly resulting in a great sounding disc.

Overall, three colors black is solid effort that is surely worth a few spins. Whether I think its worth scouring the earth for this album is a different story though. I suggest hearing a few tunes off their site before you go off scouring.

Killing Songs :
Act V: The Turning Point
Jason quoted 69 / 100
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