Place Vendome – Close to the Sun – 2017

Place Vendome – Close to the Sun

Close to the Sun is Place Vendome’s fourth album and the first for med to hear. If you’ve heard Helloweens classic albums Keeper of the Seven Keys part 1 and 2 you know what a great singer Michael Kiske is. He was really an asset for Halloween at that time. But that was many years ago and Place Vendome is not the home for singer Michael Kiske.

I would categorize Close to the Sun as power metal but maybe not the most typical in the genre. There is a little less power than metal if you know what I mean. The melodies are quite nice and I feel like Mikael Kiske has developed a lower range than what I remember from Helloween. That makes his voice more rich than I have heard it before. That’s a good thing. Because even if you sing like a God you’ll always have potential growth when it comes to the performance.

The sound is somewhat thinner than I prefer. But there’s no double about it being a really well-played and produced album. Maybe more so than is beneficiary. Over produced music tend to lose som of its dynamics. But this is nice if you’re not after bombastic theatrics.