It's been a while since I last heard a new Aria album and it looks like I missed a couple since. It'll be fun hunting those down.
I was a bit worried when I saw that the running length was an hour and fifteen minutes. That usually means there's a lot of filler. Thankfully there's none of that and the album zips by without outstaying its welcome. Aria have only gotten better with age and just about everything is better than on their previous material. They've always had a bit of a mellow side that sometimes softened the albums too much and that side is still present here, but it's a much more mature and progressive sound that has an old-school 70s-ish vibe to it and, as such, it makes for something more interesting and closer to what you expect on a metal album.
Of course, Aria have always known how to rock hard and you'll find plenty of that on this album. Their heavy metal is a little bit on the accessible side of the fence but those into melodic heavy metal won't be turned off by that as the music and the vocal delivery hit hard enough to get the fists in the air at times. Speaking of vocals, the lyrics are still in Russian. That's just part of their charm.
With Curse of the Seas, Aria show that they're stronger than ever and have upped their game at all levels. I'm especially glad to see them strike a better balance between their mellow and rocking side, resulting in an album that flows very well from beginning to end.
