Human Fortress
Eternal Empire

June 2008
Released: 2008, Massacre Records/Sound Pollution
Rating: 1.0/5
Reviewer: Anders Sandvall

This German act is about to release their third album called ETERNAL EMPIRE. The band was formed back in 1997 by the bass player Pablo Tammen and the guitarist Torsten Wolf. They put an ad in a local newspaper where they were looking for the rest of their line-up and found a woman for lead vocals and a demo was recorded but never released. 1999 saw a new line-up, a new demo and name change to HUMAN FORTRESS. The demo got a good response and several labels were interested in inking a deal with the band. The debut album LORD OF THE EARTH AND HEAVEN HEIR was released in 2001 and in early 2003 the band signed a new deal with Massacre Records and subsequently released their second album DEFENDERS OF THE CROWN. Between 2003 and 2006 several members chose to leave the band, after which the remains of the band regrouped and recruited a new drummer, a new guitarist and a new singer. During this time the band also built a new studio in Hannover, Germany.

With ETERNAL EMPIRE the band has a lot to prove, but their typical German melodic power metal doesn’t speak to me. The sound picture is grand and their music features both symphonic and progressive parts, but there’s something missing and I can’t get over the fact that the material is so poor. The 9 songs are over 50 total minutes which is way too long. It also seems like the band has problems deciding if they want to play grand metal/opera or if they just want to do ordinary melodic power metal. Human Fortress is too ambivalent and therefore the album is unfocused. It sounds like there’s someone else besides singer Carsten Frank singing at times and they vary between ordinary and death metal vocals which drags down the musical experience even more. He can’t take on the higher notes which is something this music needs and that makes it all fail and fall even flatter. There are no songs that are close to being killer tracks and I have a hard time trying to get through the album. ETERNAL EMPIRE is midway between a metal opera and a melodic metal album with poor material and a singer that can’t sing. To top it all off the members have included folk music influences that are way out of context.

This is indeed a strange album that certainly leaves more to the imagination. I can’t find anything positive to say about ETERNAL EMPIRE no matter how hard I try.