Um, is this the wrong Armory? It actually might be, because all those good things sticking on their The Dawn of Enlightenment record pretty much fails to match the buckets of positive press it has received since Armory initially made their mark on the American power metal map. When you first experience what this band has to offer, you'll most likely be in awe, but things slowly unravel into boring, wearisome poop that's plastered with unpleasant qualities; it can be quite good at times, yet very bad as well. Finding errors in this tub of cheese is like tracking a heard of runaway elephants: if you can't see them, you're probably f*cking retarded.Looking solely at Armory's lion-hearted exhibition, you'll notice one thing straight from the get-go: these guys have talent, power, and an agenda for strength. Fast riffs soar about like rainbows after a thunderstorm while rapid percussion shines down on the barren land with fast double-pedaling and rapid snare hits. It is important to understand, however, that these beautiful rainbows occasionally go in the same direction until they find themselves in stormy skies again, yet they hardly ever continue when given hints of their repetitiveness. In terms of originality, Adam Kurland's singing stands unusually triumphant in a genre that would typically crucify him for his gruff, angry voice; yet those vocal cannons can do some damage despite a few backfires. Do unusual traits like this really put Armory at the top of their field? No, but keep in mind they certainly have more charisma than other power metal groups out there.
But wrapping The Dawn of Enlightenment in total glory would be completely asinine due to obvious reasons ranging from song writing to overall performance. For one, nearly all soloing sections (both keyboard and guitar) are exhaustively carried out in an innumerable set, which not only defeats its own magic, but adds on to the album's biggest problem: each song has its blood siphoned from constant dragging on from repetitive structures or stacks of soloing.
Under the authority of epic ideologies, Armory tries very hard to reach the sky with soaring instrumentation and long tunes, yet it doesn't end up like they planned; instead, you get ten Challengers that explode right after takeoff. I mean every song sounds progressively withdrawn and stretched out until it's just a bankrupted effort of never-ending monotony, and that's clearly an unneeded extension causing bane instead of sanctification. Going from verse to chorus to verse to chorus to solo to chorus to solo to chorus doesn't work for sixty minutes, you nincompoops!
I don't know whether or not this CD is incredibly good, or vaguely sloppy; there's a shower of bipolar emotions causing both positive and negative feelings across the entire board. Quite a number of tunes really explode colorfully with Armory's chomping bite, yet they still find room to keep things running without any intelligent reasoning, and doing so leads to a very disappointing release as such. Maybe you'll find this a great catch if power metal makes you happy like an alcoholic finding a spare bottle of vodka, but calling The Dawn of Enlightenment something masterful is a mammoth exaggeration, and I honestly doubt most will be blown away from Armory's run-of-the-mill attack.