TheTalisman
Ancient Mariner
Blaze recorded a version for his new live album.
Vaenyr
Ancient Mariner
A stark change in atmosphere, with an almost hopeful feeling, despite the weak and clunky lyrics. The song takes a bit to get going and Blaze is inconsistent again. The song gets much better once the verses change from major to minor and the steady rock beat helps as well.
The chorus is beautiful and I really like it. The melodies are simple but elegant and Blaze sounds great here. We get Dave's weird solo tone again, though not as bad this time, before going into a very simple but rather neat lead section, the majority of which consists of the same three notes repeated over and over. Then we get a cool section where the guitars play a melody that Blaze sings over a couple of repetitions later. That's a much better approach than what we get nowadays, where one guitar shadows Bruce the whole time.
We get another lead section afterwards, which is something that I really appreciate on this album. Steve's at his best when he writes melodies and we get a ton of them throughout the record. Back to the chorus before we get a really cool "yeah" scream by Blaze which almost has him sounding like the singer of Running Wild lol. The final "yeah" is weaker, but it ends the song quite effectively. A 7.
The chorus is beautiful and I really like it. The melodies are simple but elegant and Blaze sounds great here. We get Dave's weird solo tone again, though not as bad this time, before going into a very simple but rather neat lead section, the majority of which consists of the same three notes repeated over and over. Then we get a cool section where the guitars play a melody that Blaze sings over a couple of repetitions later. That's a much better approach than what we get nowadays, where one guitar shadows Bruce the whole time.
We get another lead section afterwards, which is something that I really appreciate on this album. Steve's at his best when he writes melodies and we get a ton of them throughout the record. Back to the chorus before we get a really cool "yeah" scream by Blaze which almost has him sounding like the singer of Running Wild lol. The final "yeah" is weaker, but it ends the song quite effectively. A 7.