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The Square E.P.

    
       
       
       
     
             
Seven Kingdoms are a power metal band from the USA formed in 2007 releasing five albums and three E.P.'s across a fairly prolific fifteen year career! A career that's seen the band perform at various music festivals such as ProgPower USA, PPM in Belgium and 70,000 Tons Of Metal, and support many of the biggest bands in the world - bands such as Blind Guardian, Queensryche, Amaranthe, Flotsam And Jetsam, Beast In Black, Wind Rose and Rhapsody Of Fire. Seven Kingdoms also embarked on their first headlining tour in 2023, a tour which will continue later this year after the release of the bands most recent record, the five song E.P. 'The Square'...    
             
...featuring four brand new songs and a sparkling cover of a forty year old classic by the American pop rock band Mr. Mister - more on that later! For right here, right now, the E.P. roars into life with the title song 'The Square' - the pace, power and purpose all at extremely high levels! The band are at full tilt here, the speed of 'The Square' (the song) incredible, as are the powerhouse vocals of lead singer Sabrina Valentine - the scorching power metal oozing outta the E.P.'s opening salvo simply out of this world!    
             
An absolutely sensational start by Seven Kingdoms, 'Through These Waves' enters the fray with a more hustle and bustle feel, the band moving into a more traditional heavy metal realm with this one, yet losing none of the immensely infectious and intoxicating nature of the previous song! And what an emphatic increase in pace at halfway too, 'Through These Waves' storming along the freeway in excess of the speed limit - 'Wilted Pieces' shuddering the ground with a phenomenal foot stomping attitude! Yet woven into every inch of the all consuming force and bombastic boom of 'Wilted Pieces', there's an almighty elegance bordering on power balladry and pop rock pomp, Seven Kingdoms straddling so many genres I've lost count!    
             
The dazzling array of power metal on show carries on at pace with 'The Serpent And The Lotus' - the band returning blistering speed to the fore alongside immense head bang ability, the sensational vocals of the fabulous Valentine as perfect as Torvill and Dean's perfect score at the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo (Yugoslavia). And it was only a year later in 1985 that 'Kyrie', the Billboard number one hit single by Mr. Mister was released - and covered forty years later by Seven Kingdoms! Were any of the band actually alive back then? I know I was, born at the turn of the seventies I can clearly remember the mid eighties - I was a teenage metalhead listening to the likes of Iron Maiden. Helloween and Metallica, while watching all kinda sports and keeping one ear on the mainstream pop charts! And so I know 'Kyrie' quite well, Seven Kingdoms adding more weight and punch to the original, tweaking it just enough to fit within their power metal soundscape.    
             
Overall, a fabulous five song barrage of blistering power metal, full of energy, oomph and an incredibly high infectious level.    
             
             
Review by Iron Mathew Collins    
             
Reviewed for Metal Gods TV    
             
             
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