After listening to the album a few times I must say that I have mixed feelings. The music on itself is really great. They’ve managed to find a great balance between complicated technical parts and simple but powerful riffs. On almost every song Anthony Maglio gives the best of himself with some very nice sounding, melodic guitar solos. Also the drums aren’t disappointing at all. The complex fills and the fast and heavy beats of drummer Joe Cardillo fit the music perfectly. A perfect example of this showmanship is the last song ‘Necromancer’, which has 9 minutes of typical good sounding power metal with simple but fluent melodies.

 

But it must be said, although the music is great, it doesn’t innovate at all. Zandelle’s music can easily be classified as a mixture of Hammerfall, Jag Panzer, Warlord and such. Also the album on itself doesn’t bring too much diversity. Let me say it like this, even after going through Vengeance Rising once more, I still couldn’t say which song is which! Every song is practically at the same, fast, tempo and the vocals sound pretty monotonous. And this is where the bad part comes in, the vocals… I’m not saying that mister George Tsalikis can’t sing, on the contrary, but there seems to be something missing. I just can’t listen to the complete album without getting annoyed by the singing. This could be a completely personal thing, though.

 

This album misses a few elements to be a must have, so lets keep an eye on Zandelle, hoping that they will continue like this. If they manage to take their music a step higher, they might become as good, or better, as the bands that are just a little bit better than they are now!