I had never heard this band before, despite having heard good things about them. This is album number five for this band, so somebody must be buying their albums. They've recorded past albums with producer extraordinaire Sascha Paeth and are touring with Kamelot, so I knew they couldn't suck too bad.

Well At Vance definitely do not suck, but they don't do much for me. Between the dry, rocky guitar sound and a vocalist who sounds uncannily like Sebastian Bach, this is a very hard-rock/80's kind of album. It sounds very much like a metalled-up Skid Row (I can't say 'heavied-up', as "Slave to the Grind" would kick At Vance's ass so far as heaviness is concerned.) The guitarwork is riiiight on that border between metal and good butt-rock, and the vocal lines veer over into hard-rock-radio territory quite a bit. At Vance sound a good bit like Hardline, if anyone remembers that great hard rock band from the early 90s.

Not to say this is bad. The songs are decently written and very well-played, some of the choruses are catchy and the vocals are good. But At Vance never really come up with anything to get excited about. Of the new wave of power metal bands taking bits of 80s hard rock to freshen their sound (Dream Evil, Mystic Prophecy) I would have to say At Vance are of the B-grade variety. If slightly rocky power metal appeals to you, this may be your thing. But if you like your metal aggressive or at all adventurous, this will not do anything for you at all. There's too much sameyness in the songwriting, and by the end of "The Evil In You" I found everything about this band annoying.

So: not for me, and not very metal, but not without value or appeal. Try before you buy.