Chrysalys
The Awakening of Gaia

It seems as though the female fronted bands are coming more and more, and the ones with a soprano or beautifully singing girl seems be increasing a lot lately. It might be down to what albums that ends up in my grasp though and have nothing to do with any increases, Italian band Chrysalys is one of these bands. They have an album cover looking the part with the big butterfly on a white background and the obligatory font for the writings, you don’t really need to hear the album to figure out which genre it fits into. The Awakening of Gaia is otherwise the first album by Chrysalys and I had really no idea where this band would fit when I got the album along with another bucketload of WormholeDeath stuff.

Over the top is something that can be said about this band, the amount of layers in their music is sometimes reaching ridiculous levels. Majestic and grande, powerful, operatic, classically influenced, big riffs, solos, this album has a lot of different aspects to it and the soundscape is mostly quite large. The vocalists is doing a soprano voice for most of the album which reminds a little bit of Nightwish in the Tarja era and especially the grande parts of Once and Century Child. That means for you who do not know this era Nightwish that it is pompous metal with soprano vocals, somewhat simplified. The ten tracks and 45 minutes of music are mainly grande but at times it becomes smaller which adds a bit of variation, the vocals are female all the way, no beauty and beast concept for Chrysalys and for you who likes comparisons with other bands: Niobeth, Voices of Destiny and Epica.

I think that this is a good album, it has some powerful and great melodies, I like the vocals which are very good and carries the best of songs very well. The variation is decent and the melodies are really good and the sense of grandeur makes it an formidable musical work. It is an overall good piece of music that I like to listen to.

Sure all is not great, it is a little bit over the top at times making it a bit disturbing to listen to. It is also sometimes a bit too much in the vocal department with the soprano vocals feeling forced and not fitting very well with the rest of the musical landscape. I think that many times they do try and put too much into the songs which makes the song feel overworked and not brilliant. Now you should not read too much into these critical remarks as they are sought after while listening to the album and they are not as big an issue as it might be believed to be depending on how you read texts. They are however a hinderance from the album reaching its full potential.

I think that we can established that this is a good album and if you like metal that is female fronted and preferably singing in the soprano way I am sure you will find this quite exciting. It is good, the songs are good and the vocals are good along with the melodies which is why this is a really good album. It could have been made better though, there were some issues but as a whole it is quite good. Also remember that this is a debut album, which of course is something making it look even better.

This is a recommended album for all of you into pyramid produced music, female fronted music or just grande power metal music with lots and lots of layers. A good album gone just a little touch over the top.