Crystal Ball is a melodic power metal-band from Switzerland. ‘Hellvetia’ is their fourth album, thus following up the hugely awesome ‘Virtual Empire’ (blame the biography, not me) album. The Roman-style logo of ‘Hellvetia’ is pressed upon the CD as well and looks absolutely beautiful. On the back of the CD cover there’s a picture of them, and they look as though they are a second "The Darkness". I hope that’s where the similarity ends, because it would make "The Darkness" a very lousy band.

‘Hellvetia’ starts off nice though, with the first song built around a very good and inventive riff. It is here that I already somewhat start to question the vocal quality, and it is from that point on that the music starts to deteriorate rapidly. The second song still starts off nicely but quickly takes a turn for the worse, when the pace goes down, and stupid, too obvious lyrics come into play. The song ‘My Life’, is a mix between Africa (WhoO METAL!!) and Bon Jovi, a real sing-along song. The power of this melodic ‘power’ metal band reoccurs about 10 seconds per song until song nine.

‘Misery Needs Company’ is that song nine, here a bit of the lost ‘power’ seems to return, but due to the overly smooth sound it doesn’t really work, or in fact it just really doesn’t work. I still have some vague hope left when it is time for number ten to start, but no, my confidence is harshly betrayed, because the CD just takes you into the ‘Ball-less melodic pop-rock’ -abyss more and more. The last two songs in line manage to suck even more donkey balls, especially ‘Wasn’t it Love’; my god, nausea overcomes me just reading the title. The bonus track is yet another Bon Jovi-Africa-adoration-statement, thus ending off the CD in style.

Sure, technically it is all quite good, but the the man’s voice is shitty (no power), the melodies corny and the production takes off every possible (sharp) edge this CD may have had to offer. I can sum it up in one line: It is so melodic it has no power, and without power, can it be metal?