Album Review: The Ferrymen - A New Evil

Two years ago, The Ferrymen was launched to give Ronnie Romero yet another outlet for his voice. He was the 'hottest' thing on the scene at the time, and was in a stretch where he appeared on way too many records, and was getting far too much praise. The guy is good, but he isn't the second coming, and I was starting to get rightly pissed off that he was being equated to Ronnie James Dio, especially since he got handed the job of resurrecting Rainbow. That said, The Ferrymen was to my ears the best of the various projects he was part of, and since Magnus Karlsson has made plenty of stuff I've enjoyed over the years, I had hope things would gel into something even better the second time around. So was that optimism misplaced?

Yes and no. We'll start with the easy part. Is "A New Evil" a good album? Of course it is. To the best of my recollection, Magnus has never put out a record that isn't at least good, if not great (I still say his best work is Bob Catley's "Immortal", even if I'm the only one). You know when you put on one of his albums that you're going to get quality music through and through. The core of who he is as a songwriter doesn't change, so that also means you know pretty much exactly what this record is going to sound like. Little details change, and he tries to make this a little bit heavier than some of his other outings, but it sounds like a Magnus Karlsson record. That's a very good thing.

The harder part is whether this stands out as one of his better albums, and whether it's better than the first record. That isn't an easy judgment for me to make, since for whatever reason, Ronnie's voice leaves me rather cold. It's been that way since the first time I heard Lords Of Black, and it doesn't matter what band he's singing with. Something about his voice doesn't resonate with me, not the way that, for instance, Jorn would singing this same material. If you love Ronnie, you can pretty much disregard this part of my opinion. I just happen to think he pushes his voice too hard, especially when the music is supposed to be more melodic.

And that's when Magnus is at his best as a writer. "Heartbeat" and "My Dearest Fear" are soaring tracks with Magnus' trademark melodies that are sure to get caught in your head more than once. It's the heavier stuff that doesn't work as well, like the title track, which is trying to sound too much like his gig in Primal Fear. Thankfully, there aren't a lot of those tracks, and the album settles into a more comfortable groove for most of the running time. When they focus on that, the results are great.

This second album from The Ferrymen fits in neatly with the first one. It's very good melodic metal, and while it might not reach the heights of the best stuff Magnus Karlsson has penned, it's still easily my favorite outlet so far for Ronnie Romero. What Magnus is able to do that other writers haven't managed yet is to give him a strong enough melodic base, because his voice sands it down quite a bit from what I imagine another vocalist could do with the same material. They mostly strike the right balance, and that ends up giving us an album that is plenty satisfying. Maybe they haven't raised the bar, but consistently hitting the mark isn't anything to discount.

The Ferrymen continue to be very good at what they do.