Lion's Share are a Swedish band who have been around for a very long time, and I have not really heard them until now. I might have caught a song at some point, but it obviously didn't make much of an impression. After hearing their latest, I can see how that might happen.
This is actually their first full-length since 2009, so they have not been really active for a while, though since 2019 they have released no less than 18 singles in the eventual run-up to this, their seventh album. This is such prototypical Swedish Power Metal that it has almost no identity at all. If you have ever heard Nocturnal Rites, Dream Evil, or Iron Fire, then you know what kind of sound this is going for. This is a band made up of two guys, really: vocalist Nils Patrik Johansson (formerly of the unbearable Wuthering Heights) and guitarist Lars Chriss, who has been with the band since its inception in 1987. Chriss is a crisp, sharp, technical player, and Johansson is okay—he has that high-pitched, squeaky sneer you kind of expect from a Swedish band. The sound is polished, bright, and clean.
The songwriting is just kind of adequate. The faster songs are pretty simplistic, showing off the really obvious nature of the riffs, and the slower songs call on Johansson to step up, and he really can't do that. He tries to sound like Dio a lot of the time, but doesn't have the depth. There are a few hooky songs, like "We Will Rock" and "Baptised in Blood," but too much of this is just kind of meh. Not bad but not really good either, especially after 17 years.
