Band:	The Ring
Album:	Tales From Midgard
Style:	Heavy metal, Power metal
Release date:	June 2004

01. In The Beginning
02. Gathering Darkness
03. Voices Of The Fallen Kings
04. Into The Wild
05. Unite Or Fall
06. Halls Of Doom
07. Signs By The Silver Stream
08. The Chase
09. Last Battle
10. The Escape

Why lord why must I face this challenges every day? Why you send me promotional Cd's with the same topics all over again? I'm tired of the Lord Of the Rings themes for Metal, they should exist a law that bands permanently any fantasy topic on Melodic Metal?

This band chose their name after going through a lot of Tolkien names like "Frodo and his Metalheads", "Black Commando Sauron" and my personal favorite "Gandalf and Saruman Tea Party", at the end, they decided to be less obvious and went for "The Ring". In the band logo they coincidentally used the same font as the movies, and the illustration clearly depicts a scene of The Lord Of The Ring series, if I'm not mistaken, the part where Boronir tells Frodo, "come on, don't be like that! let me have the ringie, just a little while?"

Enough with the visuals, you may thought that I hate this album, but I don't, really. Is more a matter of "is not my cup of tea" thing, because, is not.
Traditional Heavy Metal with some tones of Power Metal and other stuff is what The Ring offer to us. Is it any good? Well, it depends, musically speaking, everything is in place, the vocals are fine, and instruments are played nicely.

Compositions are the point here, while they're varied, I didn't find them exciting, exhilarating. Some songs have good breaks like "Halls Of Doom" that carries on his back some Black Sabbath influences, "Voices Of The Fallen Kings" and "In The Beginning" are worth mentioning also.

This trio sure has managed to create a Cd filled with some good tunes and melodies, but it lacks some extra punch and aggression from while to while.
"Tales From Midgard" is a listenable album and I'm sure that more than one is going to enjoy it, because the right elements are gathered in almost every song.
As for me, I'll pass this one; first, is not the type of Metal that goes with my breakfast; second, I promised myself that I would, single handed, end the Lord Of The Rings trend on Metal; and third, I'm just not in the mood today.