MADOG

"As you name the ship, so shall it sail," chanted the crew of the yacht "Trouble" in unison, led by the mustachioed Captain Vrungel. In light of this, I shudder to imagine what future the lads from MADOG have condemned themselves to by choosing such a, ahem... puppy-ish name for their band (MADOG — small dog). "Fairytales Of Darkness" is a uniquely absurd pile-up of nonsense: starting with the cover art, executed in the spirit of graphics from old computer quest games, passing through the musical content itself — stitched together from faceless, lollipop-bland power metal cliches — and ending with lyrics in an Austrian dialect of English that find room for the obligatory Valhalla, the Heart of Dragon Steel (what rubbish!), and plenty more besides, except for the promised darkness and the implied menace. From the very first song, Fairy Of Darkness, MADOG attempt to stir up nostalgia for BLIND GUARDIAN's textbook "Somewhere Far Beyond." Everything screams in favor of this comparison: blatantly plagiarized moves in the choruses, solos painstakingly replayed from Blind Guardian tablature, and vague semi-fantasy themes that also seem to originate from the same source... And it would all be forgivable — one could pardon an Austrian brother — but when this kind of surrogate is also seasoned with a marvelous assortment of underplayed parts, under-mixed passages, and various other half-baked decisions, that's when a completely different conversation begins. And suddenly the grotesque mugging in the booklet offends the reviewer's aesthetic sensibilities, the kilometer-long "thanks" lists trigger a revolution in the stomach, and the ears — already suffering plenty — finally curl into a metaphorical tube... Thus, in the ranking of all possible "dogs," our MADOG lands somewhere between a miniature pinscher and an overcooked hot dog from McDonald's — a prime candidate for a date with the trash can.