Featuring a couple of members of Black Metallers Gothmog (reviewed elsewhere on this site by my comrade Charles) Cain’s Dinasty hail from Alicante in Spain, a place that holds many happy memories for me after spending a few years there as a child. It’s not quite enough to make me give Legacy Of Blood a perfect score, although there’s much to recommend it, not least their vampire obsession. Said bloodsuckers dominate every aspect of this album, and whilst there’s likely to be more than a few sucked into the band’s embrace due to the lesbian vampire shenanigans on the cover art (the best type of vampire, I’ve always thought!) the fact that Cain’s Dinasty are actually pretty darn good at what they do will hopefully spread their infamy further.

As far as it goes, guitarists Roberto and J.J. do a pretty fantastic job, but it’s whoever writes the songs that the praise must ultimately go to. Plentiful riffs, solos put in exactly the right place, vocal melodies that work well despite the fact that Ruben isn’t the best Power Metal vocalist out there... each song has something to recommend it, and it’s hard to tell exactly why Cain’s Dinasty aren’t signed when there are plenty of godawful Hammerfall rip-offs everywhere else. Maybe it’s the band’s oddly misspelt name... still, listening to Under The City Lights, technical without being obnoxious in a sort of watered-down Dragonforce-meets-early-Dream Theater way, few would hold the band’s name against them. The likes of The Journey fit in Thrashy riffs without bringing the whole band down, Under The City Lights mixes the loud bass and an orchestral backing to epic effect, heck, even ballad Remember The Tragedy is pretty good.

Keen-eyed readers may have inferred from my hints before that the band’s main weak point is vocalist Ruben, who tries hard but needs practise if he’s going to compete in the big boy’s league. However, moments like the Spanish-sung Infancia Eterna are pretty good, and he’s never actually bad. There are plenty of killer moments here, to keep even a relative Power Metal newcomer like myself interested, the female vocals on Two Seconds To Forget Your Name one highlight, but this is a well-written album, and has more than enough great songs to make it worthy of a listen. It’s not classic 80s Power Metal in a new form, as most fans seem to want, but there is plenty of Helloween buried in there, and whilst I wouldn’t recommend it automatically to Gothmog fans, Cain’s Dinasty do have a similar sense of melody and style. Legacy Of Blood won’t revolutionise your playlist, but it is a damn fine debut effort, and only a fool wouldn’t expect something even better from the band in the future.