Yep, especially Dust to Dust. Classy album that one, I wish Sotto kept going with that style for the last two albums. Oh well.
That said, I claim Advance and Vanquish as "one of the best" metal releases of 2004, not "the best."
I wouldn't even say it's one of the best.
Reckoning Night, 8 Deadly Sins, Hellfire Club, Dawn of Enlightenment, Sonic Firestorm, Defying the Rules, and maybe even
Far From the Madding Crowd were all better power metal albums released in 2004 than Advance and Vanquish. Not that A&V was that bad, just not great. The broscreams and the overuse of the Painkiller voice killed it a bit. Instrumentally it was pretty good though.
Been listening to the new Helloween a bit. At first I thought it kind of sucked with too much boring midtempo borderline-hardrock stuff, but it's grown on me. Nothing's amazing, it's just fairly solid all the way through. Compared to Gambling, the choruses are catchier, it's heavier overall, but not as speedy (unless you count the bonus tracks, all of which are the typical double kickers that I never seem to tire of no matter how generic and overdone). I'd like to see Helloween pull out an amazing album before they retire, but I wouldn't be too disappointed if they kept pumping out albums of this quality.
I'm fairly convinced that Helloween don't know what the frick they're doing when it comes to song selection though. 7 Sinners and the last few albums have all had really strong songs that only appear on special editions, while leaving some fairly average songs on the main editions. Ah well, I'll just download whatever tracks I don't get on my edition. I don't like stealing a band's music (except for checking out purposes, where I'll delete it if I don't like it), but fucked if I'm going to buy 75 different regional or deluxe versions just to mop up all the bonus tracks.