Album Review: Trick Or Treat - The Legend Of The XII Saints

I have talked before about the problem with concept albums mainly being the difficulty in telling a story through lyrics without having them stilted and awkward. There is another problem with concept albums, one that I run across just as often, but can usually ignore, because of the aforementioned issue; concept albums aren't interesting if you don't care about the concept. Should it be done well, and the concept is easily interpreted through the music and lyrics, you still need to have a subject that people want to hear about. Telling a story everyone is going to enjoy is impossible. That's why we have so many different genres of art.

That brings us to this album, which has two concepts behind it, neither of which I give a damn about. On the one hand, this record is based on an anime series. I have never seen one, so I surely don't care in the slightest about any of the characters from this particular one. Also, every song on this record deals with a sign of the zodiac, and considering that I find astrology to be a pile of garbage that somehow gets humored by the mainstream, this record is swimming upstream.... and up a mountain.

We start the cycle with Aries, and quickly run into more problems. First isn't quite a problem, but an observation that Trick Or Treat is playing incredibly rote power metal, so this song reeks of being generic. The second issue is more important, as the accent on the vocals is strong enough that many of the lyrics get lost as he tries to sing them. I've been picky about this before, but there is simply no excuse for indecipherable words on a concept album. They are dearly important, and yet we can't hear some of them. It's an utter, complete failure on every level. The band shouldn't have put up with it, but neither should the producer. It's clear they don't understand what a concept album even is if they allowed this to go forward as it is.

Beyond that, the album doesn't give us a lot to talk about. The music is mostly fast-paced power metal, but the hooks aren't the most memorable, and the whole thing feels like I've already heard it many times before. Sure, it sticks out when we get a guest vocal that tries to sound like Axl Rose, but that doesn't mean it's good. I suppose the record is fine for what it is, but I've heard better generic power metal from plenty of other bands, and at least on thos occasions I'm not left wondering what I'm missing, because I sure don't get any of the concept coming through during this one.

On that basis alone, I would have to call this record a failure. It doesn't really get across the point it's aiming for, and it doesn't give us any big songs I would want to listen to outside of the story either. It's bland, generic power metal that thinks it's something more, when it so clearly isn't. It's sort of like that kid who puts on a pair of glasses and suddenly thinks people will believe they're a genius. No, we won't. And no, this album isn't.