Metal Underground.com

There are kernels of good songs sprinkled throughout Tundra's "Dawn Of A New Disease," but nothing that really pops. Some good lead guitar work livens things up, even if the vocals are at best adequate — and often not even that.

The Swedish power metal band, which has now changed its name to "Alloy," features a fair amount of instrumental talent, with Andreas Fors' keyboard work on "End Of Days" easily making that tune the best on the album. The lead guitar work by Fors and Magnus Edfast is quite good — there's quite a solo inside the otherwise unremarkable "Undoing," and another excellent one in "Insult To Injury" — even if the majority of the riffs feel pretty generic.

Far less impressive is singer Stig Vikstrom, who is off-key a surprising amount of the time, and whose attempts at falsetto screams and more aggressive vocals on "Undoing" simply fall flat. At least when the band is playing fast, electric stuff, the instruments drown him out enough to make him palatable. "Strange New World," a Maiden-ish ballad is easily his worst performance on the disc, though the silly war-cry "Never Surrender" doesn't do him any favors either.

Even the most dedicated power metal fan will find Tundra's "Dawn Of A New Disease" to be barren of much other than some isolated moments of keyboard and guitar greatness. Subpar singing and generic riffs make this one to miss.