Enchantya
Dark Rising

Female fronted metal is how this album was labeled in the playlist of my iPod, a label put there by Massacre Records and one that got me interested in this album which is why I played it rather fast compared to many of the other albums I get. I am a big fan of female fronted metal which often tend to be more interested than much other metal, and this one also has an interesting cover artwork which feels a tad progressive. They are Portuguese and they do this silly play with capital and minuscule letters which I will not bother to put in print in this review. This is their first album even though they have been around since 2004 and released an EP shortly after that, but this Dark Rising is their debut album.

Progressive gothic metal is what they are labelled as, that is a decent labelling considering that they make use of atypical song structures. They use clear vocals and growls, all sung by a female vocalist who sings the clear vocals rather good but the growls are really poor, even the overly positive dangerous dog who reviews music to sell it says that they are poor. The production is modern and the sound is rather good but nothing overly impressive to be honest, about what you can expect from a metal band of today. Mixing clear vocals and growls can give a very dynamic sound but Enchantya does not exhibit that, the vocals can seem dynamic but the music of the band isn’t. The album is rather long as well being over an hour in playing time on thirteen tracks, not overly varied is it either.

There are positives with this debut album, their music is rather decent and the clear vocals are rather good as well. The growls are weighting down on the overall quality, and I find this album being less than amusing on an overall picture. The overall picture is actually quite dreary, lacklustre is another word one can use for it as it feels as though it doesn’t really get anywhere. There are some decent ideas in here but the overall picture doesn’t really add up to anything but a dreary result.

I think that they should completely dump the growls as too many bands are doing it today and most of them doesn’t really do it well, this is one of those most. Then they should have left some of the tracks out as there are too many tracks making the playing time much to long which is one of the reason for this album lacking dynamics, and I tend to find myself quite bored towards the end as it is too long to keep me interested all the way through. Moreover, they need to focus on the dynamics of their sound and venture away from the mainstream in which they are too firmly rooted, otherwise their efforts are just doomed to remain one of those bands/albums.

With the debut out of the way they might actually begin to focus one what they do well and what sets them apart from the rest, then they have a possible very interesting future. If they continue on the path set with this album they will keep putting out lacklustre efforts and remain in obscurity. So in the end I would say that there is potential, good potential, in this band, she sings well when she isn’t growling, the music has potential and in the future there is the possibility for things to fall into place. For now though, we have an album that doesn’t impress me much, in a way it even bores me slightly.

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