Hysterica
The Art of Metal

“The second album from Sweden’s Femetal Warriors Hysterica”, sounds fantastic, we have finally reached equality female metal bands are now sold with the same clichés as male bands. Or is it that great, really? The cover artwork looks like either excrements or something from a Sabaton album, the either or is actually nor necessary here as it is the same thing. Their logo is cliché and all about this band looks like cliché (besides being all female though) and all of a sudden I think it is fortunate that I did not know anything about this band before I heard the album. Generally though I like female fronted metal, and there are also some great all female bands like Canada’s Kittie as well as Germany’s Arven who do however have a male drummer. Well, lets see if these “femetal warriors” (idiotic term) are interesting enough to rival those.

Musically I think it is safe to say that it is quite regular power metal, poppy and catchy songs with a crystal clear production. That is the general view but there are some little sidetracks into some growling and extreme parts to add a little variation, but overall it is a bit of the supercatchy bubblegum power metal that their countrymen in Sabaton offer as well. The singer has a potent voice, sometimes she sounds like a man (not when attempting her growls though) and sometimes decently feminine although you get a sense that she works hard not to appear feminine in her performance. And as I said, poppy power metal production which feels a little oriented to a younger crowd, like children. The album has ten tracks and it plays for 45 minutes.

I think this is a decent album, some songs are just happy and great with fantastical sing-along choruses that seems design to make you smile, I am speaking of Fighters of the Century and Force which are such great and catchy things, makes me think of the great Freedom Call and their happy metal. And the album in general is good as well, the songs flow well, feels a bit children’s oriented but it is good nonetheless. One thing that bothers me quite a bit though, enough that I decided to stop listening when almost finished with the Swedish review and go for something more interesting like Karnak Seti, is the annoying love of cliché, just about every metal cliché is present on this album and after hearing it twelve times as I have this last two weeks it almost made me vomit as it just gets to you and starts to become annoying after a while especially since they seems to be taking it quite seriously, like their highest wish would be to be a group of smelly guys playing standard heavy metal because that is what it seems like they are trying to achieve, standard heavy metal with no sense of individuality at all.

Fortunately they fail slightly in this and it is at least quite good, but at the same time it is very much like anything else out there and nothing that makes you want to look twice. I think they could remove “Fe” in front of “Metal Warriors” as no one will even reflect over this being an all female band (they probably will and praise them for playing as the guys and so on). So in the end I think this is a decently good album but I don’t think I’ll ever want to hear it again as it is just too much heavy metal cliché and the cliché and lifestyle of heavy metal is something I don’t have even the slightest interest in, it is probably the most boring thing ever invented (you know, you tend to get fed up with all those clichés you get to hear as a reviewer and interviewer). So a good album with some sad undertones can be my final words, but they do sound just like the guys, fantastic isn’t it?