Gateways

Chalk up Elvenpath as another band who’ve fallen victim to having too narrow a musical focus. It appears that with their debut EP “Gateways” they simply tried to cram as much epic power metal into forty-one minutes as was possible, in the process forgetting other requisite ingredients like catchiness and memorability. There is certainly some promise here, with fragments of what sounds like a good release surfacing every now and then. That being said, the band has a lot of work to do.

Being a self-financed release, “Gateways” sounds easily as bad as you might have feared. Everything is quite muted, even a bit muffled. The guitars have little bite, while the drums sound exceedingly punchless. As for the bass? Good luck picking it out individually. That leaves the vocals, which could possibly rescue this thing from obscurity (well, at least mediocrity). Unfortunately, as you likely could have guessed, no such luck. The singer’s got a limited range, but even with that he doesn’t really do the band any favors. Better choruses would help – the band and singer especially seem to have trouble coming up with memorable melodies for a chorus.

I’ll admit the opener “Land That Could Not Be” starts off fairly well, mixing a rather happy style with a solid bridge, resulting in a song that I suppose lives in the same neighborhood as “epic”. Actually, and to be fair, several of the bridge sections, many slowed down a notch or three, are done well despite the crappy sound. It’s the supposed-to-be fast parts that sound so castrated because of the production that come across as especially in need of a redo. Songs like “Amazone Queen” simply fall flat, that one due to as weak a chorus as I’ve ever heard. As for band comparisons, maybe Logar’s Diary (the three of you who know of them) or, more broadly, Greek-based Airged L’amh and Elwing (yeah, I’m having trouble finding a suitable popular reference). There’s an ever so slight hint of a folk influence, though the bad production mostly asphyxiates it. Otherwise it’s a slapped-together mixture of the power and true/epic styles. If you’re a fan of both and don’t mind self-done jobs one step above a demo, then you may find a modicum of enjoyment buried within. For everyone else, you’ll likely find that Elvenpath have managed to stuff forty-one minutes of mediocrity into much too small a bag, thus burying the few good ideas and hints of promise to be found.