FATIMA HILL "The Snow Tower" /CD/

Second full-length album by Japanese Progressive Power Metal band.
Fatima Hill is the brain-child of Anjue Yamashiro, who plays "6 & 12 strings" as well as electric mandolin for this album. "Aion" features the unique vocal stylings of Diva Yuko's groaning 80's-style vibrato that manages to sound vaguely like Siouxsie Sioux.
Guitar wizard and band mastermind, Anjue Yamashiro, delivers excellent Power Metal tracks. Heavy buzzsaw riffs in "Ares Dragon" flow over the audible grumbling bass lines. A touch of synthesizer here and there does not distract. Some samples are even orchestral in their nature. The balance between keyboard and guitar has the latter winning the match in the excellent harmonized lead. Voice of Yuko is both melodic and powerful. Quiet synthesizers open up playing the main melody, and then drums kick in. After a verse and the catchiest chorus Yamashiro produces an Eastern influenced lead with lots of fast scales playing.
After two Power Metal songs, album goes more in the direction of the Japanese Folk influenced radio friendly Pop Rock style. Keyboards take on increasingly heavier load and on "Other". Poppy and radio friendly, but good Metal music.
The bass player, Hayato Asano, is an excellent musician and deserves a boatload of credit. Where he is allowed to be heard, he delivers. The production is definitely not powerful, and puts an emphasis on the radio friendliness.
Be prepared for eight new tracks of Japanese wonder children.This magnificent band sounds like Rainbow, Dio and Black Sabbath (Dio era). Their bombastic Power Metal contains some fabulous guitarwork, great song strucutres and the heavenly voice of their female singer Yuko. Enjoy their dark, sometimes Doomy Metal with lots of fast guitar breaks. These Japanese musicians are also continuing the great Japanese Metal tradition that started in the early eighties with bands like Loudness, Bow Wow, Earthshaker, X-Ray and 44 Magnum. But the music of this band comes nearer to more obscure names like Murasaki and Eastern Orbit. Fans of Japanese Metal will know exactly what its mean!
Fatima Hil Records/WorldChaos Production, 2002 (KDM-008). Made in Japan. Pressed in Hong Kong.


Tracklist:
1. Ares Dragon 6:05
2. Babel Dune 3:58
3. The Black Bat 4:23
4. Aeon 4:24
5. Ultimata 6:37
6. Other 6:24
7. Stigmata 6:24
8. The Song For Beatrice Part3 (The Seven Songs) 9:20
Total playing time: 47:35


Samples: http://www.last.fm

Remastered re-release of the debut full-length album by Japanese Progressive Power Metal Metal band.
Some bands don't get the credit they deserve, even in the Metal Underground. This is the album that is incredibly underrated.
The general sound of this harkens back to Rainbow far more than it does to Helloween, and as that perhaps implies, this is not the album to pick up if you're looking for something really fast and/or heavy. It's quite mid-paced for the most part, and would probably qualify as hard Progressive Rock rather than Metal if it was just a bit softer. Despite the obvious Rainbow influence, it doesn't sound "retro"- there's definitely some influence from modern Metal, as well as perhaps a hint of eighties J-Rock of the heavier sort, along the lines of X-Japan and Loudness. Nor does it sound like straight-up Rainbow worship- the band carves out a distinct identity for themselves in a couple of different ways.
One is the general atmosphere of the whole thing, which is created by some excellent usage of keyboards. This is fairly keyboard-heavy music, but they never seem anything but appropriate- the band avoids having them drown out the guitars, and they work very well to help create an atmosphere.
The other major distinguishing feature of Fatima Hill is their vocalist, Yuko. She is, in fact, probably the element that most stands out about this band. Most female fronted Power Metal seems to take one of two vocal approaches- "angelic"/quasi-operatic style soprano vocals which are both rarely done as well as they should be and which are a horribly overdone cliche at this point anyway, or less commonly, a rougher, more traditional Power Metal style. Yuko's vocals are something altogether different from either. Her voice is very deep, startlingly deep in fact, yet it's also very smooth- she never sounds gravelly-voiced or "tough". Yet despite the deepness of her voice, she doesn't sound at all androgynous- it's pretty obvious listening to her that she's female. Her delivery is very much in the over-the-top Power Metal tradition- Ronnie James Dio was clearly a pretty major influence. It's almost a quasi-operatic style at times, but she would be a contralto instead of a soprano, and as such she never really sounds reminiscent of the usual high-pitched quasi-operatic female Metal vocalist.
"Valhalla" is structured somewhat oddly- there are three relatively short songs at the beginning, and the rest of the album (not counting the bonus track) consists of three long Progressive epics, each over ten minutes. 
It's very, very good album, and served much more acclaim than it got. If you're fan of Progressive and/or Power Metal looking for something bit different from the norm, or like unusual vocalists, just seek it out. Highly recommended!
Remastered re-edition features bonus track.
Fatima Hil Records/WorldChaos Production, 1997/2000 (KDM-004). Made in Japan. Pressed in Hong Kong. Please note: although the CD is new and has never been played there are light visual shabby on the disc surface (happened during transit) that will not affect the sound quality.


Tracklist:
1. Aiesis And Your Bible 6:15
2. Egyptian Tarot 4:43
3. Wheels Of Fortune 3:23
4. The Sun Of Thorns 14:08
5. Valhalla ~The Song For Beatrice Part2~ 13:01
6. Oriel Window 12:14
Bonus Track:
7. Aeon 4:16
Total playing time: 58:00


Samples: http://www.last.f