Wingdom’s debut album Reality has been out far over a year but is re-released by Dockyard 1. The band started in 1998 when Ex-Sonata Arctica keyboard player Mikko Harkin and guitarist Jukka Ruotsalainen started co-writing music. Ex-Rhapsody bass player Alessandro Lotta joined forces, together with Sami Asp on vocals and Markus Niemispelto on drums. Stratovarius singer Timo Kotipelta heard that band and signed it to his own label because of the bands’ fresh and original appearance. A handful of big names and some compliments from a singer in a leading power metal band. Things could start off worse.

 

With the names of Sonata Arctica and Rhapsody printed on the back, one might expect some bombastic epic metal or some more German sounding happy fast powermetal, but both are not the case. Wingdom writes steady, heavier, rocktracks that have a slightly powermetal feel. Don’t expect big guitar solos or long keyboard parts – even though keyboard player Mikko Harkin wrote most of the material - but pretty simple straight forward songs.

 

Songs like ‘A Sigh Of Despair’ and ‘The Essence’  start very mild, slowly building up towards a heavy climax which leaves some room for some keyboard-effects and a small guitar solo. Singer Sami Asp has no problem reaching all the high notes but sounds like too many other metal singers and doesn’t give the band an own identity vocal-wise.

 

When we look at the individual musical performances they’re very strong overall, but all miss the same thing; no excesses. With the outstanding last song “Lighthouse Pt2” not included, the tracks are all played in a safe mode. Steady riffs, standard vocals and backings and the usual keyboard backups. The few solos the album has are all short and often not even that good. Too bad, this album could rise above the mediocre section when the certainly talented musicians would add that little extra.

 

However, Wingdom’s debut album is not all that bad actually. If the band continues to write songs as the last track ‘Lighthouse Pt2’ for their new album it could become something and they’d definitely would get some new fans. For now they’re a good band that plays standard AOR. Nothing more, nothing less.