Heaven Rain
Second Sun

When someone says Bosnia and music you don't really think about hard rock. More likely you think about weird contributions in the Eurovision Song Contest and wars with neighbour countries. This is my first contact with the Bosnian hard rock scene and for a first meeting it was a quite pleasurable one.

The first thing I notice is that it's quite obvious that this is a band lead by a keyboardist as the keys play intensively everywhere on the album - and more so than anything else I've ever heard. They often start pretty modest but then turn bananas somewhere towards second half or especially against the end of the songs. Just listen to the song At The End. An instrumental ballad, played with piano and drums the way their played in military marches, softly. But towards the end the keyboardist gets some sort of blackout in his head and starts playing every key he can find in a tempo that could make the world spin backward and make time go the other way. The same thing happens in Face Of Misery - a song with interesting choruses, but ending up with keys shaped as a long yellow fruit. Talk about "look at me" complex.

Another person in the band that seems to have some "look at me" complex is vocalist Miona Graorac, a woman whose name I won't even try to pronounce. Judging from the band photos she's in desperate need for some attention and I also get that feeling when I hear her sing and the quality of what she does varies from pretty good to pretty bad depending on song and what she tries do do. I wish I at least could say she was good looking and therefore a good front figure… but I won't say that. And this quality irregularity is something that's reflected in the music as well. Some songs are really good - some songs are really nothing at all. I like the first two (even though the first of these are just an intro) so the album gets a good start, but then the album starts going more up and down than the himalayas. . The eleven songs goes this way - one is good, one is bad or two are good and two bad (or maybe one good and two bad or the other way around)until Heaven Rains 42 minutes of fame are over.

I think the best way to describe this album is by using the words "metal", "melodic" and "power" in a somewhat different order than the way I just presented them: melodic power metal. And they do it in the best Kamelot fashion, even though there's plenty you can relate to the Spanish wave of power metal from about ten or eight years ago. Some of these bands also had female vocalists that sounded very male, and so does Graorac. The record label calls her one of the best female vocalists on the scene, which I think is a pretty strange comment because that must mean their definition of a great female vocalist is someone that sounds as male as possible. I can't say Miona sings very pretty, but quite male in a feminine way… king of like a drag queen.

Overall the quality is okay and the music isn't bad, and if you're a fan of any of the listed similar band I'm pretty sure you'll find this band interesting. However, I have a hard time seeing how this would work for anyone else than the average power metal fan. I think the average AOR-head or death metal creep or techno freak will find it very hard to find it overly appealing. And to me it's a bit too uneven to really do the job. I think about half of it is good, and the other half is not so good...

HHHHHHH