Agony - Gift Of Life

Insania (Stockholm) - apparently there are other Insania's out there!! - was originally formed almost 15 years ago in their native homeland of Sweden. In 2003, after three albums, 3 of the founding members left the band; leaving vocalist Ola Halen and drummer Mikko Korsback to recruit new members (including guitarist Peter Ostros) to keep Insania alive. Agony - Gift Of Life is the first album with this all new line-up and was in fact finished in December 2005 but problems with the original mastering of the album resulted in further setbacks. The album mastering was finally completed late last year with this new album, the band's 4th to date, finally getting it's long overdue release just this past summer.

Insania play a tried and true version of Helloween, Gamma Ray and Stratovarius inspired melodic power metal. The speediness of the classic power metal of the late 90's is ever-present, as are hammering double bass fuelled riffing, shredding lead guitar work and soaring vocal melodies with huge gargantuan choruses. The album opener Facing My Destiny is classic speedy, melodic power metal with thematic riffing, high-range soaring vocals by Ola Halen and the type of crazy and speedy synthesizer laden power metal typical of newer bands like Power Quest. The Stratovarius influences are front and center with To Live Another Day with an excellent melodic sense and great chorus section and continues with Gift Of Life, a track showing a very tight blend of guitars and keyboards, Timo Kotipelto-like vocal lines and another killer and soaring chorus section. Insania manages to approach Dragonforce-like warp drive speed with Fight For Life, a song that's speedy and wild with lightning fast riffing and keyboard lines. The powerful and epic qualities of Times Of Glory are a nice refreshing change of pace with the overall feel and melody lines reminding me of Yngwie Malmsteen material. A couple of ballads are included in this set with Time Passes By being a short track with acoustic guitars and orchestrations accompanying Ola Halen's vocals. One Day is a huge power ballad with the sort of building quality that sees Ola's voice soaring to the heavens after an orchestrated mid-track acoustic guitar solo - a very fine example of the power and strength in his voice. Alive uses a more prominent riff pattern, giving the song an overall heavier edge than most others on the album and the mix of driving and speedy tempos results in another strong track. Overall, the guitar work by Peter Ostros is truly outstanding. Big slicing power chords accompany many of his arpeggio-like melody lines and his lead work is a brilliant mix of stunning attack and emotion. Lyrically, Insania uses less of an epic fantasy based lyrical style than previous work and adopts more emotionally charged subject matter with the songs on Agony - Gift Of Life

For the most part, Ola's voice is very strong throughout the album but there are several occasions where he really strains to hit the higher register notes. That and his awful and downright irritating high pitched falsetto on Valley Of Sunlight (bad idea!!) are the only real faults with his vocals. He sounds like a mix between Timo Kotipelto and Kai Hansen and suits the style of Insania's power metal very, very well. I'm all for power metal bands using keyboards (synthesizers mainly) to expand their sound but will someone please take the Hammond organ away from these guys!!!! I love the classic Hammond organ sound when used appropriately but not with a speedy power metal band....it just doesn't fit.

Some may call this band nothing more than "generic" power metal and for the most part, they may be right. However, even though very formulaic and predictable, you can't deny that Insania is a quality power metal band. They have a great sound and a strong sense of melody with the right accents in the right places. The verse-pre-chorus-chorus style of writing allows for more of a gradual build-up to some of the huge and soaring choruses on this album, an extremely effective style that works very well for this band. Typical, yet very solid is just about as brief a description as you can give Insania. Agony - Gift Of Life is an album that power metal fans should enjoy especially fans of the classic speedy and melodic style of the 90's, with a little of the keyboard-infused Power Quest style. A few points taken off for some obvious flaws with the vocals and awkward keyboard lines otherwise, a very good album.