by Steve Huey

The House of Atreus, Act 1 is an incredibly ambitious project even for Virgin Steele, a band whose recent recordings centered on no less a concept than The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. It is essentially a partial retelling of the Greek tragedy concerning the royal family cursed by a hideous act of cannibalism and doomed in the aftermath of the Trojan War; the music is appropriately epic and grandiose, borrowing from classical and prog rock as well as traditional, straight-ahead British-style metal. To be sure, there are times when the music collapses under its own bombast or the weight of its pretensions, but it's surprising that Virgin Steele pulls off this project as well as they do.