Label: TSM/Indie 2012
Review by: Urban "Wally" Wallstrom
Scythe Of Orion and their first long play release, "Sun-Dial". I quite like this, it's different. Mystical metal music and not just another female fronted Goth act. The Finland based band certainly are a promising and fresh prospect. Keyboardist Kristian Wrang bring a certain dreamy atmosphere of mystic to the table and the violin (by Maarit Koivisto) merely add yet another layer of myth and medieval ways. There is a certain angular, folk-rock meet pop influence at work here which gives most of the eleven tracks a different take at the standard symphonic/prog/goth metal as of lately.
The lyric tells about the values of today's world. There are songs about greed, the use of power, and the state of nature. It's been mastered by Mika Jussila at the famous Finnvox studios and their lead singer Anu Lamminsaari is a very confident and strong vocalist. Unfortunately, the vocals are perhaps a tad too strong and heavy on the accent and could at times almost be mistaken for J-Pop or ABBA-ish? I do however enjoy Anu's sweet voice! The same goes for the almost innocent approach of catchy tracks such as "Ice Soldiers", "Perfect Silence", "Catch My Dreams", "From Behind" or "Listen My Friend". It's a fun meltpot of very melodic symphonic metal, ABBA, folk-rock, neo-classical Goth and J-Pop? (again, intentional or not).
Main songwriter Petri Lamminsaari (guitar) cites Arjen Lucassen's Ayreon-recordings as one source of inspiration, but there are several others and the chances of finding Scythe Of Orion as just another copy-cat act are actually quite slim. It's definitely different from the rest. I don't understand why there's a CD-R in the digipack though? It's really not too expensive to get the real deal nowadays and especially not if you're a company of five or six musicians. Final verdict: Neat!
www.scytheoforion.com
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