TIMELESS RAGE - My Kingdom Come (2026)

The Band:  Timeless Rage

Origin:  Germany (Villingen-Schwenningen)

This record preceded by:  Untold (2022), Forecast (2013)

Band members (6):

Lead vocals - Nicolaj Ruhnow

Guitars - Michael Benk; Christian Pirch

Bass - Daniel Wengle

Drums - Klaus Buchfink

Keyboards - Anna Keil 

Founding members remaining: 3

Trying something a little different; just a straight up music review of a record that came out recently.  This was actually by request.  I don't know if I'll be writing on demand like this very often, but, well, why not do it once and see how it goes?  I'm not worried about conflicts of interest, given that it's not as though anyone's paying me to do this.  And if this makes me a little more ginger about negative criticism, or a little more anxious to like something... well, I should always be making a serious effort to like a piece of music for what it is, right?  And I should always be writing with the understanding that the people who made a piece of art might actually someday read my ramblings about it, right?*  So, I repeat, why not?

The internet is light on info about Timeless Rage, but I've been able to discern that they do seem to be a non-AI band made up of actual human beings who cut the occasional silly promo video and heavily use the internet to try to engage with listeners, that they've undergone some lineup changes, and that this seems to be what they hope is going to be an era of increased productivity, with pretty much all of their recorded output coming within the last five years even though the band has existed in some form for fifteen.

First impression is a likeable stew of galloping riffs, symphonic punch-ups, and mid-range hooks.  Something about the music just seems likable in general.  At its best, Kingdom sounds busy in a good way, with the two guitarists, synth-"strings," and choral vocals all being part of some punchy choruses.  At its worst, it sounds busy in the sense of having a bunch of parts stepping on each other.  Overall I'd rank Timeless Rage as a stronger chorus band than a verse band.  Most songs are all about the build to the chorus.  Sometimes this comes off really well.  "The Seed Of Fear" is an early highlight in which the full package comes together - great down-tuned riff with nicely placed bell and violin sounds for the full cacophony effect, an almost dancy pre-chorus to liven things up, and then the ground has been tilled for a fittingly lyrical, hooky chorus.  No extensive wankery either, just a short mostly keyboard solo between second chorus and third chorus.  When listening to tracks like this, I get to feeling like the band has it all.

Here's the thing, though.  In my recent award winning** series of blog posts going through some of the ?classics? of power metal, I sometimes complained about long instrumental bridges and brushed against the edges of wondering why we couldn't have more music without solos.  This record is kind of the antithesis of that problem, in that it often feels like it needs something to spice it up.  Timeless Rage describe themselves as offering a little bit more of a rough edge than one normally gets from the smooth stylings of symphonic metal.****  A big part of their brand is "dark symphonic metal."  I guess their songs go "dark" in the sense of moody, but couldn't they get louder, or harsher, or, uh, something?  You have what sounds like it ought to be just right for me - a mix of axes and keys, a non-shrieking singer, and choruses with a lot of melody and a lot of complete-sentence thoughts.  And it's not like they don't have solos at all, they're just short.  And it's not that they never go fast.  I think what's missing more than solos is something to punch up the verses.  There're a lot of two-note back and-forth guitar riffs, a lot of steady drumming without much variety, a lot of very simple keyboard flourishes.  Even the full-on interludes like the part of "Moonbite Serenade" sound pretty basic to me.  Can't Christian or Anna or Nicolaj or someone just go nuts, at some point... or do it together so that the rare flashes of super-high energy are sustained?  Can't Nicolaj's vocal parts ever not be mid-tempo, no matter what's being played underneath him?  Why have six people in your band if they're all going to play similar roles?  For me, My Kingdom Come is full of good songs that are brushing against the edges of great, or maybe just need the right interludes between similar tracks, or just one extra bit of sauce.

What's kind of interesting is the way the record is divided into thirds.  I mentioned that I do quite like "The Seed Of Fear," but even excepting that one, the opening quartet of tracks tend to get to the point and feature good choruses.  Then my listening invariably goes into a bit of a lull with the embarrassingly titled "Moonbite Serenade," a song that, well, I guess it's serviceable, and has some interesting drum parts (put those in the good songs, guys!), but otherwise sounds a lot like the other songs and doesn't have anything interesting to do with vampire imagery.  After more love and vampires with the similarly generic "A Vampire's Legacy" giving me nothing to grab onto and the spoken-word part of "Regrets" never failing to make me cringe, I get to feeling like the band is just a band like many others.

But what about the third third?  Turns out, Timeless Rage saved the best hooks for (almost) last.  "The Enemy Is You" is easily my favorite song here.  The drums pop when they're doing their usual dark soundscape, Nicolaj stops holding back (the direct lyrics help) as the description of impending battle picks up, and they just nail the art of the epic minor chord.  The "the enemy is near!" parts convey the menace that earlier tracks only hint at.  This song makes sonic density work in its favor.  It's like they suddenly made all the right creative choices at the same time whereas before they were only getting two out of three right.  This is followed by "We All Shall Fall," which features the single most haunting melody line on the record, tossed back and forth between instruments and singer the way I love, and pairs it with some of their heaviest riffs.  Ye gods, what a killer pair of tracks.  Why were we wasting time with all that vampire stuff when we could be doing this?

This sort of gives me an opening to mention as an aside that My Kingdom Come is a concept album.  It took until something like my fourth listen before that came together, and it was mostly because their promotional material calls it a concept album.  Maybe some of that should have been obvious, with "We All Shall Fall" explicitly coming from Lucifer's army, after the rest of the record has been introducing a character who, well, as it says right in the title track, "I assumed they'd call me God, but instead they call me Lucifer."  So, maybe I just needed to pay closer attention.  But things are still in vague enough strokes.  For instance, the only reason I know that the two verses in "My Kingdom Come," the song (both performed very similarly), are supposed to come from two different characters, is the fact that the music video is divided into labelled sections.  An overall structure does emerge of Lucifer representing the armies not only of Chaos against Order, but also as humanity's spark of freedom and creativity, and spends the record tying to convince the listener that it's better to serve in hell than to stagnate in heaven.  Leading to the catharsis of "We All Shall Fall," which I'm interpreting as depicting souls having a cause to presumably get quixotically obliterated in the name of, but at least finding inner peace from the fact that it was in the name of something.  Not a bad framing device to make the record more than the sum of its individual songs.  Yet I still don't quite get where the vampire love stuff fits in, and resent it more than ever for weighing down the middle of the record.

Back to that question of variety - Timeless Rage cite a variety of influences and use the word "variety" a bunch in their promotional material.  I can't get over the obvious echoes of mid-2000s Kamelot; some tracks, like "The Seed Of Fear," dropped last line of chorus and all, would've fit right in on Epica.*****  Let's not pretend that this record isn't in sizable part Kamelot worship.  The soundscape-heavy moody approach to songwriting isn't my own preferred wing of symphonic power metal, which may be why I took some time to warm to My Kingdom Come.  I think there's a unity in composition that makes the songs more memorable to me than actual Kamelot songs tend to be, to the point where I personally would probably choose to listen to Timeless Rage over Kamelot on most days, but that's just the nuances of individual taste.  

So, overall, I'm pretty happy with my time spent with a relatively new band.  My Kingdom Come isn't a perfect record, but I'm happy for it just to be a pretty good piece of cinematic symphonic PM that'll scratch some peoples' itches for this style.

Favorite track:  "The Enemy Is You"

Runner up:  "We All Shall Fall"

Least favorite track:  "A Vampire's Legacy"

Rating:  3.5/5

Recommended for:  Those who like the smooth, hooky side of power metal, and the downbeat dark side of symphonic metal in about equal proportions

*I have not quite gotten used to that.  Since starting this blog, I've interacted, albeit very briefly, with multiple people whose music I've written about, and I really, really, was not prepared.

 

**There are no awards.  Someone should start some awards so I can win something.***

***Like "Blogger With The Most Self-Indulgent Footnotes."  Or "Most Stubborn Insistence On Capitalizing Every Word Of Titles, Including Articles." 

****Their promotion also heavily, for some reason, emphasizes the male vocals.  I guess in the world of stuff labeled as symphonic metal one needs to advertise that because the male-fronted and female-fronted bands have different audiences?  I guess?  Timeless Rage are a mixed-sex band, which I always appreciate, but even the background swirl is 99% male voices.

*****Hell, there's even a song about longing for a character called "Helena!"