Metal Digest-"flawed at times, but its got all the pieces in the right place"

When it comes to ambition, not many genres reach for goals as lofty as power metal and Ground-Force, which are nothing to do with Charlie Dimmock and co. have set their stall out to be as ambitious as they come. Settling on their line-up in 2020, the Bangladeshi band have been working on their debut album ‘Tree of Life’, a concept album about a dystopian future, space travel and alien genomics.

That all sounds like a major headfuck from just typing it out; see, I told you it was ambitious. ‘Tree of Life’ tells the story of Robin and Azra and their struggles that are delivered in true power metal style. Yet, this is not done in the generic Iron Maiden-esque galloping rhythms and soaring vocals; ‘Tree of Life’ is a clever album which shows the range of influences that have gone into this band. Tracks such as ‘Spear of Light’, ‘The Watchers’ and ‘The Archangel’ show a band worshipping Roy Khan era-Kamelot as well as Firewind. Furthermore, there is a progressive touch here too, something that wouldn’t be out of place on a Stratovarius album or even Symphony X album as Ground-Force add in swathes of progressive elements which gives ‘Tree of Life’ quite a broad range of appeal within the genre.

However, there isn’t much here that hasn’t been done before, dystopian concepts are a little done to death, but it is a concept that pisses all over Dream Theater’s ‘The Astonishing’ but let’s face it, that isn’t hard. ‘Tree of Life’ is decent enough, it’s a little flawed at times, but its got all the pieces in the right place to make future releases even better.

Reviewed by: Adam McCann

Original link: https://metal-digest.com/2021/09/22/ground-force-tree-of-life/

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