Band:	Christopher Lee
Album:	Charlemagne: By The Sword And The Cross
Style:	Heavy metal, Power metal
Release date:	March 2010

01. Overture
02. Act I: Intro
03. Act I: King Of The Franks
04. Act II: Intro
05. Act II: The Iron Crown Of Lombardy
06. Act III: Intro
07. Act III: The Bloody Verdict Of Verden
08. Act IV: Intro
09. Act IV: The Age Of Oneness Out Of Diversity
10. Act V: Intro
11. Act V: Starlight
12. Finale
13. Iberia
14. The Bloody Verdict Of Verden [instrumental version]

I am not going to say that this is crap, nor am I going to say it's the greatest thing since Black Sabbath. It does fall under the symphonic metal genre - even though the orchestra plays more than Manowar and Rhapsody of Fire do. Yes, it does seem like a metal-opera and not an all-metal concept album (a la Kamelot's Epica and The Black Halo). Does that mean it is terrible and deserves to be rated as low as St. Anger? Lyrically, there are places where the rhyming structure is annoyingly predictable, like in most musicals/metal operas. The ever-present 3-to-1-minute interludes can be annoying to those who are looking for a metal album that is relentless in its "assault" - by relentless I mean non-stop metal tracks, back-to-back.

Now the plus-side: yes, there is one. It seems that this album hopes to carry itself off on Christopher Lee's performance and the fact that he is related to Charlemagne himself in order to become epic - and it works. The spine-tingling voice of the actor who has portrayed throughout his long and illustrious career Dracula, Saruman and Count Dooku brought down as that of a powerful warlord great in magnanimity and fearsome to his enemies works well. The quality is definitely something good: unlike most symphonic metal bands who use the symphony to back the band, this one uses the band to back the symphony, which is an interestingly new approach that is sure to be criticized. The story presented is definitely a new one - the tale of probably the most hated name in pagan history second to Olaf Tryggvason (Heri Joensen from Týr listed him along with Olaf, Sigmund Dragonslayer and Attila the Hun as "bad guys" during an interview).

So where does this album stand? It is definitely something that should at least be listened to once in order to have some opinion about it, whether good or bad. I understand that a lot of people, especially in the metal scene, are under the delusion that it is unmanly to appreciate theatre and opera and therefore would not like this album. I'm not saying it's the next milestone of the metal genre, I'm just saying that it hardly deserves to be rated as poorly as it has been.