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I had heard about this band Edguy before I had actually purchased Theater of Salvation and what I had heard was that it was a band that was very young and led by a musical prodigy of sorts. With that information I thought I knew what to expect. I figured the album would be pretty good but would probably sound as though it was lacking some experience in the variety of the songwriting. If you listen to a lot of power metal you will realize how hard it is for one band to differentiate itself from another.

I am not afraid to admit when I am wrong (no matter what my wife may tell you) and I'll be damned if I wasn't wrong here. The first time I listened to this album the overwhelming thought running through my mind was, "These guys are how fucking old!?!. There is no fucking way!". The most ambitious thing I was doing at that age was trying to arrange all my college classes so I wouldn't have to wake up before 10AM and making sure to change the bong water. Here we have some punk kid roughly the same age writing arguably the best power metal album of 1999 (jealousy can be an ugly thing). Tobias Sammet is the main driving force behind Edguy (writing all of the lyrics and most of the music) the other members of the band have to be extremely talented to pull this off. The band consists of Dirk Sauer on guitars, Tobias Exxel on bass and Felix Bohnke on drums.

The more I hear this album the more I realize something disturbing. This album may just be TOO good. This is going to be very hard to live up to on their next album and the even more disturbing thing for me personally is I have been judging every other power metal album that I buy against the sheer brilliance of Theater of Salvation. I have to say these other albums aren't faring all that well.

This is just plain and simple a great power metal album from start to finish with excellent musicianship and great songwriting. All the hype about Tobias Sammet being a musical prodigy is well founded and very hard to deny. I would have given this album a perfect rating but I am waiting to see if they can outdo themselves with the next release…heh.

Track by track

The Healing Vision (intro)- 7.5
Babylon- 10
The Headless Game- 9.5
Land of the Miracle- 9.5
Wake up the King- 9.5
Falling Down- 10
Arrows Fly- 9.5
Holy Shadows- 9.5
Another Time- 9
The Unbeliever- 10
Theater of Salvation- 9.5

Ratings

Vocals- 9
Guitars- 9
Bass- 8
Drums- 9
Keyboards- 9
Production- 9.5