Review Summary: Too much Dio leads to far too much.
The unfortunate part about Astral Doors is that they've been too unnoticed for too long. The oars aren't in the water anymore. For their limited audience, they've tried too hard to assimilate into the "Ronnie James Dio" culture - akin to actually sounding exactly like them. The strict musical perspective makes the whole band just feel recycled; whenever they actually try to speak, the album never has anything interesting to say to us. Same old song, same old day. And they're not alone; albums like
New Revelation and
Of the Son and the Father are almost so related to Dio's style of metal it's almost plagiarism. After a five year departure, the band unceremoniously returns to the scene with their newest album,
Jerusalem. And surprise, surprise: it's the same as they'll ever be. Saying this band will change is like saying Michael Bay movies will get better.
And the album doesn't waste time in setting itself up for another re-working - of every tune they've ever done. The opening track of
Seventh Crusade doesn't waste any time in proving to sound so metal - in the first 2 seconds after a quick drum pounding, the vocalist wanders in. To give him credit, the man does sound very much like the late Ronnie James Dio - he's got the same gruff and wiry voice that Dio roared in his albums and on the
Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow albums, if it sounded like Dio and Michael Kiske's love child. Sure, that sounds like its on the cusp of sounding like a true album to headbang to, you'll lose interest very quickly - when the album is fast and chugging, it's at its very worst - be prepared, half of the album has songs at the 3 minute mark - and shows how little progress they made. Songs such as
With a Stranger's Eye and
Child of Rock'n'Roll (both of which are played in succession respectively) are both baring affairs with an average guitar shredding through the whole song, and the bassist and the drummer are doing what they do best: not f*cking anything up for the vocalist and guitarist. Tracks like
Pearl Harbor fare a bit better, if they weren't as hilariously bad as the movie with the same damn title.
When the album does slow down a bit, it gets a tad better. It picks up with track such as the 5 minute mini epic
Battle of Jacob's Ford, a perplexing entry for this band's catalog mostly because it sounds more progressive metal than it does heavy thrash imitation. The whole song is made up of lighter guitar and drum work, intermixed with an occasional outburst of heavy instrumentation. It probably fares a bit better than other tracks because it gives a slight rise to belief that this band does actually have more interests outside of straight power metal - where mostly everyone in the back is soloing on their own. Other tracks do rise to this belief, though, such as
Lost Crucifix and to a higher extent,
The Day After Yesterday, the latter of which does feature two excellent acoustic breakdowns (both in the intro and after the guitar solo), rare for this band.
Despite this band trying to do something different, their theme sure as hell hasn't changed. Like every last one of their albums, there is nothing here that truly screams appeal. This album sure does live up to its name - instead of rising like Christ, they fall when he arrives at Jerusalem and get stuck in Gethsemane, draining to the bottom. Only unlike Jesus at Jerusalem, these guys clearly aren't accepting that. They'll more than likely make another album, give or take however long it takes and if anyone really cares, and it's just to literal of a blueprint of the word 'mixed bag' - there's a few diamonds in the rough, some really shiny diamonds, but until then we just have to wait till they finally get crucified by the Saints of Metal.
