Insane

Nothing better for a great classic look at metal! Great all around music, like Iced Earth on steroids, as well as based on the Gunslinger!! INSANE 7 book series from Stephen King, this band would easily make him proud if he likes metal or not, they did the job. Never gets old to me...and I have alot of burned out Cd's.

Awesome!

Whether you have read the Dark tower series by Stephen King or not, you should give this concept album a try if you like metal. From start to finish the album has an epic feel to it, and the references to the Dark tower are just fantastic. It's almost a shame that mainstream audiences will miss out on this.

D&W does it again

As a guy who grew up listening to bands like Testament, Sanctuary, and Megadeth, I really appreciate when a band can give you some quality song writing and vocals to go with all the shredding guitar madness. D&W has come through again on their second CD: I can only hope there is more to come. Excellent!

Fantastic CD

Another fantastic album from Demons and Wizards who is a combination of two of the best power metal bands: blind guardian and iced earth. This CD is even better than their first. Unfortunately, they don't have any of the bonus tracks which include two of my favorite songs: spatial architects and lunar lament.

In the early ’80s, a style of heavy metal was fast rising, in which groups sang about (and even to a point, dressed like) characters from an era long ago, in which gentlemen dressed in armor, and saved damsels in distress in tall castles. While some of these groups built a long-term career (Dio, Iron Maiden, etc.), many fell by the wayside as the style faded away, and was replaced by thrash and glam metal acts. By the early ’90s, some of the music from these earlier bands could be detected in such new acts as Dream Theater and Iced Earth, who also pushed the ‘technicality’ of their music up a notch. Fast-forward another ten years to the early 2000s, and there is a new crop of bands that combine both of these metal eras together, especially by the prog metal “supergroup” Demons & Wizards. Comprised of Iced Earth’s Jon Schaffer and Blind Guardian’s Hansi Kürsch, the duo issued their second album in 2005, Touched by the Crimson King. Picture a modern metal soundtrack accompanying a triumphant ride through a forest on horseback, and you have an idea of what such songs as “Crimson King” and “Terror Train” sound like, as well as the album-closing cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song.” But not all of Crimson King is riff-based, as evidenced by the tranquil ending of “Beneath These Waves” and the beginning of “The Gunslinger.” But by and large, Touched by the Crimson King is a modern-day prog metal fan’s dream. – Greg Prato