Pristine in Bondage

At its core, this album has great heavy riffs and instrumentation, offset by an out-of-place sounding vocalist. She sounds great technically, but her inflection and style sounds like it belongs on an alternative rock album, not within these bombastic riffs. I don't think the robotic, siren-like delivery ever works well with power metal. The overall sound has this weird clash between relatively subdued vocals and power metal riff virtuosity. It surely reduced the appeal of the album for me.

The lyrics don't help at all either. They read like they came straight out of a 00s metalcore band, very "woe is me, life is miserable." There are plenty of albums with dark themes and cynical outlooks within the power metal genre that are fantastic, but this album is especially on-the-nose in its misery. This on-the-nose lyrical approach makes it sound childish and naïve in a way. Not good. For example, we can look at the song 24 Pills. Even the name of this song already makes me cringe a bit, but the lyrics get even more cringeworthy. Take a look at the lines I was always a December girl, I slept through the summer and was drunk through the fall. Perfectly miserable stuff! These sort of lyrics can work with the right vocal style: like by delivering vocals with a mad flourish we'd hear coming from David Defeis of Virgin Steele. But the robotic seriousness of Johanna De Pierre's vocal delivery makes it sound like they mean every single word without even a tiny bit of irony. The result is that the miserable lyrics sound like they're coming from someone just depressed, wanting to give up on life rather than someone wanting to tear out what ails them. This willingness to fight and destroy negativity is a core aspect of what makes power metal great. We don't have that here. This super-cynical lyrical style may work for bands with forceful vocalists like Kimberly Goss of Sinergy, but it doesn't work well at all here. The first-person perspective most of these songs have lyrically doesn't really help for reducing the whiny feel of the album either. Not sure if they were trying to ape something like Evanescence here or perhaps Sonata Arctica for a more similar band in power metal lyrically, but it doesn't work well.

Alright, enough about the vocals, lets look at the good part of the album. The guitarwork. We've got harmonized dual guitars, something we heard often in metalcore bands of the era like Bullet for my Valentine. I always enjoy dual guitar stuff, and the worship the writing has to consistently using dual guitar riffs I really appreciate. Although this does lend to the idea that the band was trying to ape more popular styles of the time, with a bit of metalcore chugging in there as well. Everything guitar-wise sounds quite good, despite whatever influences they may have had.

I'd still call it a good album overall, but the strange clash between the vocal style and the instrumentation reduce the ability of them to blend together to form a cohesive experience. This tends to land the album in a state of mediocrity or boredom for the listener. Not the best place to be, but it may be easier to enjoy if the vocal style appeals to you.

Very few were those who captured this band in their prime; well, to talk about prime in their case would be a bit far-fetched as they only danced for about five years altogether, a sizeable group of rotating lads and one girl from the beautiful town of Stockholm, who did their best to leave a trace on the voluminous and very competitive Swedish metal roster. An assured debut presented a tasty mixture of power, thrash, doom and gothic, the delivery recalling Arch Enemy’s “Anthems of Rebellion”, among other strong outings from around the same time, the guitar work almost as dexterous as the one offered by the Amott brothers. A drastic difference between the two formations in the vocal department, though, the girl here, the name Johanna DePierre, sticking to a pretty effective clean mid-ranged croon, emotional and higher-pitched on occasion but nothing excessively adventurous.

The album reviewed here is a decidedly more aggressive offering with speed and thrash ruling over the proceedings with an iron hand, and also guitar as evident from the smashing “Atropine”, the moshing setting aggravated to sizzling headbanging proportions by “Revolution Without Arms” on which even some death metal can be caught unprepared. A series of fervent gallopers (“Coming Home”, Without Stains”) bring the approach to a near-boiling point, with all heads cooled and stoned by the heavy doomy stroller “Inflict”. The swaying in heavy unison occurs once more, on the tad more varied but equally seismic “Crow Me”, before the album erupts in a firework of hard elaborate thrashing on “Primal Nature”, with more impetuous gallops and impossibly gorgeous melodies spell-bindingly entwined, the latter making sure the guitar duo here remains firmly engraved in the pantheon of the hugely gifted axemen.

A truly great slab this one, a very nice walk on the border between the modern and the old school, with motifs and nuances interlacing in a compelling, attention-grabbing manner. DePierre is in her nature as well, shining all over with a slightly more attached performance than the one on the debut, singing her heart and soul without breaking glasses or reaching inaudible frequencies, leading the show with the requisite panache and authority. Alas, it was her that led to the untimely dissolution of this project, as once she departed the camp in 2005, it was over and done for the others, too. The boys did try hard to find an able replacement, but their endeavours produced no results, and they laid down the weapons as for them the presence of a wayward commanding diva in their midst was mandatory. The drummer Robin Bergh drowned his sorrow in the dark October Tides with the death/doomsters of the same name; while the bassist Ronnie Bergerstahl buried himself with the veterans Grave, and later naturally reached all the way to the traditionally doomy World Below.

Amaran… what could that possibly mean? The google search only produces, “a power metal band from Sweden. Powerful metal with heavy guitars combined with the clear voice of the signer Johanna DePierre”. Wow… not terribly accurate this description but still… that’s some way to shine for a day and leave a trail for a lifetime… horns raised sky-high; right now!

The chunky riffs of Machine Head meets the virtuosity of Luca Turilli while the sister of Lacuna Coil’s Cristina Scabbia passed by to serve hot coffee. This family party turns into the formation Amaran. That’s the story it could have been…

The truth is: this band was formed in 2000 when guitar players Kari Kainulainen and Ronnie Backlund went looking for musicians to play their songs. The Swedish Amaran was founded with members coming from different musical backgrounds. Their first demo was recorded without a drummer. Good reviews resulted in a record deal with Listenable Records. In 2002 they recorded their debut ‘A World Depraved’ in the Aabenra Studio in Denmark. The songs they wrote after that sounded heavier and in April 2003 they went to Sweden to record ‘Pristine In Bondage’.

The CD sounds as a thunderstorm and singer Johanna DePierre remains standing up in between all this musical power. But don’t get me wrong: this is not a gothic singer with wings of elves but a female voice with power who is absorbed by the frisky, rocking base of her fellow-musicians. The album opens with two heavy rocking tracks. In ‘Coming Home’ the vocals are soothing and poppy and we have some slower parts too. It is very catchy and it is a summary of everything Amaran stands for: thrashy riffs, melodic solos and full of emotions. In a track called ‘Inflict’ it is exactly the contrast between the folkloristic vocals in the beginning and those heavy chopping riffs that make it special. And the marriage between those opposites works out well in a freshening result.

Suddenly, a surprising male grunt looms up in ‘Katharsis’ and in ’24 Pills’ this man offers us some dark spoken fragments to create a mysterious atmosphere. Every song has an unexpected diversity so we can conclude it is an exciting release. And don’t forget…this has to be played at high volume!