Review IMMORTAL GUARDIAN ‘Unite and Conquer’

Immortal Guardian started in 2008 and what began slowly with a couple of demos and EP led finally to a full-length debut album in 2018. Since then, though, the time span between releases shortened dramatically into a 2-3 years pattern of new records by the band.

‘Unite and Conquer’ is the tile of the bands third effort and comes with nine songs. Progressive power metal is what the album entails and that the fourpiece could convince no less then Ralf Scheepers, the German metal siren, to contribute to ‘Roots Run Deep’ speaks to the music of Immortal Guardian. The track belongs certainly to the highlights of the album. The dark and husky voice in the beginning hand things over to a blasting and versatile metal anthem with Scheepers vocals fitting perfectly. In fact. Scheepers gives the song its fascination.

The same goes for ‘Lost in the Darkness’ as it is again a guest singer that enriches the tune. Vicky Psarakis from The Agonist gives the song a nice twist and makes it stand out from the other deliveries on ‘Unite and Conquer’.

The rest of the album isn’t bad stuff, but it is also nothing really new. Immortal Guardian doesn’t bring much new to the plate. The mix of powerful metal with progressive layers isn’t something new and the symphonic aspect, reflected by songs like … doesn’t lead to the big wow-moment either. Already when listening to the opener ‘Ozona’ shows the limitation and it the vocals giving the impression of Carlos Zema wanting to much, especially in the high-pitch area.

‘Unite and Conquer’ is an album that has some good moments, but one also gets the impression that ambition is higher than what the toolkit offers for the realization. The ideas and inspiration for the songs partly seem to be disjointed and, in the end, stays a longplayer that might has the potential to unite but misses the final punch to conquer.