Third album from Finnish Metal warriors Perpetual Rage, and it starts exactly where their last one left off. No gimmicks or frills here, just more old-school '80s Metal backed by Petri Hallikainen's guitar shredding prowess and Tomi Viitola's first-rate singing. At this rate, he's shaping up to be one of Finland's best Metal singers, as his powerful performance here is reminiscent of other past greats like James Rivera, Geoff Tate, and most especially Bruce Dickenson. He can power it out on the more straightforward tracks like album opener "The Call", the Tarot-esque "Enlightened by Darkness", and album closer "The Edge of Time", but he also displays an impressive amount of depth and emotion on the ballads "Down to the Wire" and "Lost in a Dream". All that said, the songwriting on this is fairly simplistic and not bound to surprise anyone, but it's also catchy and sincere in its attempts to recreate that old-school magic and, if you're simple like me, then that's all you really need it to do.
