There are those rare releases that create an immediate impact on the brain and must be written about right away, while that first impression is still strong. In many cases, this is connected with a release of stunning power and originality. Not this time. In fact, having just played "Dimensions", it's taking all the willpower I've got to keep from running to the toilet and vomiting up every particle of food in my stomach.

My God, is this horrible! Is there still an audience for this kind of garbage? If these guys set out to copy every cliche of wimpy, fluffy, cutesty European power metal and then quadruple it, they could not have come up with a more insipid record than this. Lightweight, poorly written and severely lacking balls of any kind, this is what Gamma Ray would be like if you took the METAL out...a disgrace, considering Gamma Ray's Dan Zimmerman is the drummer here. It is a truly pathetic collection of Euro-fluff atrocities...the idiotic narration of "Demons Dance", the retch-inducing happy children's choir of "Innocent World", the stupid "wacky metal" of "Mr. Evil" (obviously a stab at something like Helloween's "Dr. Stein" but not successful in any way), the super-derivative "Light Up the Sky", the expected but still painful mid-album wimp ballad "Words of Endeavour" (featuring tremendous lyrics like "Can you hear my call, can you hear my cry?". The worst part is, even the sugary melodies don't work. The choruses just don't seem to be memorable in the least, or if they are, it's because, like "Blackened Sun", they steal them from power metal classics that are more than 15 years old. By the time the album ends with the HORRID bagpipe-infected "Far Away", the listener is a screaming hunk for protoplasm sitting in shocked horror at what he has just endured.

If you want REAL power metal, check out stuff like Slough Feg, Attacker, Antiquus and Iced Earth. Freedom Call's "Dimensions" is gay beyond all known parameters of gayness. AVOID!