Artwork by: Niklas Sundin
Style: Power Metal, Djent, Progressive Metal, Alternative Metal (Mixed Vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Symphony X, Monuments, Pyramaze, Kamelot
Country: United States
Release date: 21 November 2025
The promo is a knife’s edge that must be carefully honed, then walked, by many an artist, author, and band in the hopes of catching the attention of increasingly attention-starved customers. Embellish too much, and you’ve set an impossible bar that invites naught but scrutiny should you fail to clear. Too meek, and you may as well have written nothing at all. Good pitches require boldness, sure; confidence, definitely; but above all, they need to be truthful. For example, Havoc was a pitch-perfect film because it was basically advertised as a non-stop bloodbath actioner by the director of The Raid, and it delivered.
Californian power-prog outfit In Virtue describe themselves as a boundary-crushing act that’s “not just ‘prog.’ Not just a technically advanced or stylized band but a progressive band in the purest form of the word”, one that’s “vast as the stars” where “no sound escapes the massive supernova that is In Virtue.” Consider me intrigued. With a pitch like this, I’m expecting something truly grandiose, a genre-bending black hole of style and substance that will annihilate my preconceived ideas of what progressive music can be. This is bold, confident… but is it truthful? With thirteen years separating Age of Legends from previous LP Embrace the Horror (2012), In Virtue certainly gave themselves the time and space to craft a work capable of living up to such hype. Let’s see what they’ve cooked up.
Taken as a whole, Age of Legends feels like a mirror pieced together from fragments of other bands. As I was listening, I heard snatches of Bloodshot Dawn in the male harshes and the aggressive, more tech-death-coded passages (“Sisyphus Awakening”, “Purgatory”), the nimble yet burly riffcraft that has cemented modern Symphony X’s sonic identity (“Sisyphus Awakening”, “Karma Loop”, “Purgatory”), and even dashes of poppier power acts like Delain or Pyramaze. These slivers embed themselves throughout Age of Legends as opposed to representing a single track’s musical mission statement, which makes for a surprisingly varied minute-to-minute listen within each track. Trey Xavier and Rami Khalaf are clearly talented guitarists, able to inject riffs with the kind of serpentine energy that’s made Michael Romeo such a treasure, while also dabbling in bright djent a’la Periphery or TesseracT (“Tempus Fugue”). Xavier’s vocals are mainly of the tough-guy variety, leaning towards the likes of Russell Allen or Borealis’ Matt Marinelli in grit but also flexibility. He’s a good fit for the material at its punchiest as well as its poppiest. The harsh vocals are fine, nothing extraordinary but never feeling out of place. Less can be said for the metalcore vocals on “Where the Edges Meet”, which struggle to make an impact on an otherwise decent song.
What does make an impact is “Push That Rock”, the inclusion of which I demand recompense. Like Sisyphus toiling with the boulder, all of the progress gained from the last two tracks grinds to a complete halt as we’re subjected to Xavier repeating “push that rock back up that hill” with increasingly manlier delivery for nearly three minutes. Luckily, “Purgatory” picks things back up with more lively Symphony X-core, but the momentum killing of “Push That Rock” did enough psychic damage to render me stun locked as I tried to purge the mindless repetition from my sundered thoughts. I’m willing to believe that the band intended this for thematic purposes, as pushing rocks becomes something of a motif throughout the rest of the album, but surely there was a better way? By dropping a pothole so early into the journey I was forced to artificially “restart” the album, with “Purgatory” having to work double-time to get me back on the road.
The biggest problem facing Age of Legends and In Virtue as a whole, however, is that none of what they’re rolling out is particularly boundary-shattering or unheard of. What they’ve done is create a melting pot of purported influences, having taken bits and pieces from other genres and bands and stirred it all up into something that’s often engaging but hardly unique. They’re a modern progressive power metal band, full stop. They fall in line with all the aforementioned acts, not to mention countless others. And that’s not a bad thing! But when you sell yourself as some mind-blowing endeavor, this eighth wonder of the world, and then give me something I’ve heard in one form or another, I can’t help but feel disappointed. Age of Legends is a fun record, catchy, nimble, and passionately delivered. I just wish In Virtue had told me what it was upfront so I knew what to look for, rather than leaving me to push that rock back up that hill, push that rock back up that hill, push that rock back up that….
Recommended tracks: Sisyphus Ascending, Karma Loop, Purgatory, Desolation Throne
You may also like: Rest, Repose; Seas on the Moon; The Android Meme; Sunburst
Final verdict: 6/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram
Label: Independent
In Virtue is:
– Trey Xavier (guitars, lead vocals, bass, synthesizers)
– Jamie Hush (bass)
– Rami Khalaf (guitars)
– Alex Nasla (keyboards, vocals)
With guests:
– Charlotte Wessels (vocals (Track 3))
– Chaney Crabb (vocals (Track 13))
– Dave Davidson (guitars (Track 11))
– Court Henson (backing vocals)
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