A really ugly cover - made by Joe Petagno, the Motörhead artist, probably with his left hand in a hangover morning when he needed money - and childish photos and boringly uninventive song titles. The visual appearance isn’t too promising, but, surprise, the music is excellent. How deceitful can butt-ugly covers be.

The band’s guys themselves call it power metal, but, if power metal means Helloween or Stratovarius or all the 100 000 others, this is something else in my opinion. Fast songs, but there’s no fairy-assed wailing singers or massive Germanic choruses or all that cliche pourage. I guess if I had heard this 15 years ago I would have called it speed metal.

The first song is an intro, but the next four song row is pure murder: steel-hard music with melodious flavour, and above everything Mika Kuokkanen’s voice. He’s the real original factor in Afterworld’s music. His voice somewhat reminds me of Ozzy, but still, he’s a better singer. He tries some high notes, and they sound OK enough; but they’re not the main point in this music. Another thing that is essential for Afterworld is the songwriting and vocal arrangements. There’s really good attempts to reach something fresh-sounding, and many times they succeed well. Many singing melodies really are pleasing the ear.

The playing itself is real professional-sounding and the production is excellent; nothing new in that nowadays, though.

I suppose this album is completely unknown to most and forgotten by majority of the remainder. The marketing and promotion must have failed awfully, because there’s so much worse metal that’s popular these days. It’s funny how this package sucks in all other ways but musicwise. I’ve thought that if the sense of style of, say, Sentenced, would have been combined with music like this, it would have been a sure breakthrough. I wouldn’t even touch this album if I saw it in a shelf at whatever price.

There seems to be a version available where there's two additional bonus tracks, Prison Without Walls and Are We Alone. That's probably an European version released through Noise. I've got a Finnish version, a digipak released through Mastervox.

Neon Nights / May 2003

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01. Dark Side Of Mind
02. To The Afterworld
03. Lost In The Dark
04. Never Ending Sleep
05. Sixteen Innocent Children
06. Power To Kill
07. The End Becomes
08. The Silence Of The End
09. Virtual Angel
10. Touch Of Hate
11. The Final Winter

If the previous album’s cover was bad, is this one among the worst ones I’ve ever seen. And if the song tiles were uninventive, are they even more uninventive now [who the hell would anymore entitle a song ”Nothing To Lose”?]. So, has the music accordingly become better? Well no, a bit worse actually. But not significantly. This is a fairly OK album. Something else has changed, too: the formerly quite large singer Kuokkanen has lost a lot of weight and looks like a maked-up bitch in the photo. But luckily enough his voice is still there.

In fast songs this band is at its best. And again we hear great vocal melodies and arrangements. But as a whole this album isn’t as creative musicwise as its predecessor. And then there’s a boring cover song choice, Abba’s Money Money Money. It’s such a worn-out song, and making a metal version of it is a thought born worn-out.

A nice album to listen through, nothing more, nothing less.

Neon Nights / May 2003

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