NO LIMITS

Song writing-wise "No Limits" is an album which mixes progressive-flavoured songs with straightforward, more or less conventional Power Metal songs and, unfortunately, some songs that sound out of place compared to the rest of the material. The whole package comes with some admirable musicianship; the disc is full of spectacular guitar work (solos!!) and Joe Terry’s (Fabio Lione's pseudonym on this album, he went to the famous epic metal band Rhapsody after this album) role as vocalist probably couldn’t have been played by anyone else.

The progressive-flavoured songs are arguably the best songs on here, as they provide some magical moments and make things quite original. An excellent example is "Midnight Resistance" which successfully interweaves dream-like magical moments with some faster parts. The title song is another such song. It starts with a fantastic intro, and proceeds in similar fashion to "Midnight Resistance" in building up the song. "In the Shade" sounds almost out of place with its Progressive-Thrash-tinged riffing (which isn’t representative for the album). Nonetheless, it’s one of the better songs.

You can find some straightforward Power Metal in songs like "Mortal Sin", which apart from its intro is basically an up-tempo Power Metal song. "Dreamland", which has some excellent riffing, is another such song, with flowing and straight to the point song writing. "Piece of Time" is no different; a pretty simple, melodic song with no stops and a refrain that’s often repeated throughout the song.

Then there are the weaker songs, and it’s quite surprising to find them here, since the rest of the material is so excellent. "Vertigo" is one of those songs. It’s almost a techno-metal song and the keyboard and vocal style is horrible. "The Right Sign" is similar. It’s hard to call it a Metal song simply due to the keyboard playing. The last two songs "Time Has Come" and "Looking For", although not horrible, are two pretty uninspired – and unnecessary – ballads/outros.

Throughout the disc, there’s a pretty heavy usage of keyboards. If you don’t like keyboards, you just won’t like "No Limits", but us who don’t mind, will find that the keyboards serve an important role, and for the most part gets the job done, even if there are some questionable influences present.

All in all, "No Limits" could probably have used a little bit more work on the song writing as the consistency is somewhat lacking, but when the album does work it provides some magical and downright amazing moments which have virtually no counterpart in Metal. It’s a shame that the band never went on to perfect this style of music as the results would have been interesting, but as it happened, their follow-up "Return To Heaven Denied" marked a departure to a more conventional form of Power Metal.

album rating: 6.5/10 points = 67 % on MPV scale = 3/5 stars

point-system: 0 - 3 points = 1 star / 3.5 - 5.5 points = 2 stars / 6 - 7 points = 3 stars / 7.5 - 8.5 points = 4 stars / 9 - 10 points = 5 stars