Band:	Prodigal Earth
Album:	Zenith II Zero
Style:	Melodic heavy metal
Release date:	February 2009

01. Disaster 121
02. Broken World
03. Lonely Gods
04. Once Upon A Crime
05. Crossroads
06. God's Children
07. The Young Ones
08. Will To Live
09. The End (Ashes Of Desire Pt. 1)
10. Pro Defunctis
11. Pro Defunctis [Alternate version]

A bit less than a year ago Pitch Black Records, a young Cyprus-based label, sent me their first offering, Diphtheria - To Wait For Fire (you can find the review here) and now I'm holding their second release in my hands, "Zenith II Zero" by Prodigal Earth. On this album the vocal performance is delivered by Nicholas Leptos, who also sings in the Cypriot bands Diphtheria and Arryan Path. I suppose in the metal scene of Cyprus pretty much everyone knows everyone anyway.

So anyway, what does Pitch Black Records give us with their second release? "Zenith II Zero" is pretty high quality oldschoolish melodic heavy metal with some power metal thrown in as well. Of course Iron Maiden is the first band that comes to my mind as comparison. The music is mainly guitar-oriented in a really cool way. On 11 tracks Prodigal Earth smack us with a multitude of tasty riffs, leads and solos, following up every great guitar part with another one. The two guitarists both did an excellent job on this CD, a big thumbs up to them! The aforementioned singer also does a pretty good job, nothing really outstanding, but versatile and always very solid.

As the album goes on, it becomes obvious that the gap in quality between some songs is quite big. There are totally awesome tracks like "Broken World" and "God's Children" but others like "Crossroads" are completely forgettable. Further this release has two big drawbacks. The first one is the production. It's not extremely bad, but it's just obvious that this CD could have been better if for example the drums would have been produced better and the mixing would have put more emphasis on the catchy, powerful vocal parts. The second shortcoming is about just that, there aren't enough really catchy sing-along parts (and often the catchiest parts that would have been awesome refrains aren't used a second time ("Broken World" comes to mind)). Furthermore, the whole music and lyrics are a bit cheesy, which might put some people off, I personally don't mind at all though.

Despite these weaknesses "Zenith II Zero" is a debut album these Cypriots can be proud of. The music is captivating, some of the songs are really great, the musicians pull off a fine job, some of the guitar parts being downright fantastic, there's enough versatility between the songs and in the songs themselves and all in all this is a really solid CD. I definitely recommend fans of melodic heavy metal and oldschool power metal to check this one out and am pretty curious about what these guys will be able to offer us with their second album.