In 1995 in “Land of the Free” Gamma Ray created something unheard - an amazing mixture of the epic, hymnal metal of the power scene, the classic heavy metal and the jolly mood of Helloween, united by such a wiping power that there still are crawling shivers down my spine when I hear any of the songs off this album. There is nothing like this in this year’s sequel... “Land of the Free II” is everything the first part wasn’t and what should not be any album by a stable band. Right in the typical for the group beginning with “Into the Storm” there stands the main reason I have lost interest in the modern heavy metal scene - monotonous pounding of the bass drums, impersonal instrumentals, playful melodies and drawling choruses. For the first time I stopped a new Gamma Ray album and couldn’t hear it to the end in the first listening... Damn it, Kai Hansen replays songs that he already has recorded! “From the Ashes” sounds like “Wings of Destiny” from 1999, the beginning of “To Mother Earth” reminds of the golden Helloween piece “Eagles Fly Free”, and the rhythm passes through all the songs with that annoying “taka-taka, taka-taka” without any variety or at least some imagination. Above all in their new album Gamma Ray have taken ideas of other colleagues, the grossest being the sincere quotation of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Iron Maiden in “Opportunity”. Everyone has years and could find the similarities by himself. And if there weren’t the fresh “Real World” and the really strong “Insurrection” - the only one strong enough to bear the weight of the first part of the album - this CD would have gone to hell. If Gamma Ray have named their new record somewhat else, we could swallow the lack of ideas and place it next to the boring “Majestic” while waiting for something more solid, but to have it filled with nondescript and lifeless compositions teemed with citations not only of their own works, but of the works of the biggest heavy metal band in the world, and to charge it to be an heir to the epochal sounding, uniqueness and beauty of the original “Land of the Free”… That’s too much. I am sorry Kai, but that’s not the way.