Abyss of Darkness

Hey look, a random power metal band I acquired.

The vocalist has a nice clean tenor that I thoroughly enjoy... some of the time. Some of the time he sounds like Timo Kotipelto and other times he has almost a thrashy rasp to his voice, though they all seem to do this annoying ascension thing that they should really not do again. The changes vary from song to song, and sometimes as often as measure to measure, and come across as quite erratic. The vocal aspect could've been much much better, had they stuck with one or two styles, but multiple chaotic changes within a single song just grates on my nerves.

The instrumentation is decent, though nothing really spectacular. The keys are where they belong, if a tad too "electronic" for my taste. The drumming a little too frantic at the wrong times and the guitars a bit too squealing during the solos for my taste, but overall I've got no specific complaints with production or tone. However, the music is plagued with the same chaotic element as the vocals. With tracks/measures that sound like they belonged in the 80's coming out of some NWOBHM band, a couple modern power metal parts, some blues-rock, and even a few moments of groove/thrash this band just doesn't seem to have the songwriting skills or direction to write a cohesive and coherent song.

It's all well and fine to attempt to try a number of things to try to differentiate your band from the generic/standard sound, but this is just excessive. It's almost like the band threw a bunch of ideas in a hat and wrote every song on a measure to measure basis decided entirely by what they pulled out of this hypothetical hat. Regardless of how they got to this end result, it sound horribly disjointed to me, For every moment of goodness, there are two that either simply aren't good or don't fit the song in any way.

Overall this band is very hit or miss. Some of the time they do everything right, but not often enough. I hope this album was an example of a band looking for a direction, and not the direction they had decided upon. The potential's there, hopefully they can harness it to a better result next time.