Power Ball

Overall, ‘Crystallizer’ is a thrilling blend of power metal and hard rock, and with its sing a long style choruses, you’ll be singing along from start to finish…

After a couple of blatant throwback offerings to the days when heavy metal was joined at the hip with AOR, right down to the campy Sci-Fi oriented album art work that was all the rage circa 1985, former Swiss cover band turned melodic power metal outfit Crystal Ball found themselves in the unique club of Nuclear Blast signed acts…

After a couple of blatant throwback offerings to the days when heavy metal was joined at the hip with AOR, right down to the campy Sci-Fi oriented album art work that was all the rage circa 1985, former Swiss cover band turned melodic power metal outfit Crystal Ball found themselves in the unique club of Nuclear Blast signed acts…

There is a certain charm to an album like this from a historical standpoint, particularly for anybody who still wanted a more flashy and fun style of metal/rock that cut against the "Alternative" ideal of dumbed down songwriting and morose or mundane lyrics about how much the world sucks, because this is about as clear of a rejection of the decade it was born from that one could find. It embodies the same sort of fantastical escapism that would occupy the early days of lighter, fantasy-oriented bands like Freedom Call and Edguy while also being a bit more retro in character, perhaps most closely dovetailing with the somewhat later reformation and restyled incarnation of Domain…

Another release from power metal's golden age, Hard Impact, the second album from Swiss metallers Crystal Ball, was one of the first attempts to fuse AOR with European power metal, and though bands like Domain and Evidence One went on to release albums that owed a lot to this, it holds up even now…

When cooking up one of your favorite old recipes, sometimes adding different spices and/or ingredients to the usual mixture will excite your taste buds, and in the end, bettering the original formula. The same can be said for music, and CRYSTAL BALL is a perfect example…

To state that the mid-2000s were a time of transition for the European power metal scene would be stating the obvious, but it was a particularly turbulent point for one of its most prolific and conservative affiliates Crystal Ball…