The Italian Power Metal band White Skull releases it’s third concept album The Ring Of The Ancients. After The Dark Ages (about the period of Inquisition in the Ancient Romans) and The XII Skull (about Vikings), The Ring Of The Ancients is dedicated to the legends and battles of the ancient Celts. Because of an obliged break caused by health problems the band could spend their full time on writing new material. With this album the band starts a new area in their history under the wings of Dragonheart, the new record company.

The music on The Ring Of The Ancients is power metal with full throttle, the songs contain a lot of influences of bands like Maiden, Helloween and so on. Sometimes the band slows down, but most of the songs are up tempo. After a while the continuous high speed is getting boring, although the band tries to break the speedy riffs by adding some breaks in the songs. These breaking points however are rather short.

The vocals are the weakest point; the vocals of Gus are rather rough. Normally I like such a voice but the singing is with such a lot of power that the voices are over the top; it gets irritating.

Valhalla is definitely ancient, apparently that is the reason of covering the Black Sabbath song. As most of the time I don’t like covers, this time is no exception; the original is more powerful, not to mention the difference between the voices of Tony Martin and Gabarrò.

Favorite tracks are Ogam and Half Moon Path, the band is slowing down and the melody and solos are quite strong, the other songs are up–tempo (The Ring of The Ancients, After the Battle), and ordinary metal songs (Head Hunters, From The Mist). The album ends with Tuatha De Danaan, a boring instrumental acoustic song with Celtic influences. I doesn’t fit with the album.

I think the fans of bands like Hammerfall will like this album.