Heaven's Gate
February 24th, 2007

Let us have a look at this new band from Norway . Featuring Jørn Holen – Drums, Maja Svisdahl – Vocals, Gunhild Mathea Olaussen – Violin, Mats Rybø – Vocals and H-Man - Spoken words. This is what the band has to say: “Even though me and my old friend Chris both have a disturbingly varied collection of vinyls and CD's, we always were a couple of metal-heads growing up. The process of making "Heaven's Gate" was finished early fall 2006 after about 5 weeks of pre-prod, recording and mixing. Somewhere along the way, Keldian evolved into a blend of metal flavoured by both modern and more traditional metal styles. Our debut album "Heaven's Gate" is an epic sci-fi journey exploring the hopes, fears and future of mankind”.

Giant, Aha and Asia goes metal or maybe I should say melodic rock/aor in a big crash with melodic/power metal. I have a hard time to describe the sound of Keldian. They have a basic melodic rock/aor sound, but they've also added some pure metal on top of that, so the result is quite amazing. I haven't heard any other band lately with a sound or a mix like this. So if you are looking for something new and special then Keldian will be the target.
The three opening tracks “ Crusader ”, “ Heart Of The Sun ” and “ Requiem For Their Light ” are dynamite for your soul. I can hardly believe that this is a debut album. Keldian will be a band to remember. These guys seem to have ideas enough to write some sensational stuff for the future. Crazy ideas! The rest of the album continues almost in the same classy way as the brilliant opening, maybe even more experimental. A few songs could have been slightly more polished and some vocal failure here and there was a little bit disturbing, but in total Keldian made me happier then many of the releases in 2007. Rock on guys! (PERRIS RECORDS)

7/10

Johnny Forslund
AOR Dream Zones, February 2007

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