Rentap
Summoning the Sun

A fun thing (sometimes not as fun) is all the music we are asked to review here at Hallowed, from both labels and promotors as well as the bands themselves. This allows us to know many new and interesting bands, sure we cannot take them all and for me the choice is made completely by chance, there is no preference to what I review (although favourite bands will be reviewed of course). This time the chance fell on dutch band Rentap who contacted me a while back asking me to review their debut EP.

So here we go, the female fronted quintet has selected a earth shattering name. It means “shaker of the world” in the Malaysian language and was given in their history to a warrior way ahead of his time. This of course means that these guys needs to be both ahead of their time and make music that shatters the world. Question is wether or not they can make it. Sure dutch female fronted bands has been good to me in the past and they guys in the band seems to have experience from other strong bands so why couldn’t it succeed?

Well, they are not ahead of their time, that much is very certain. They are very much of their time. Modern heavy metal/hardrock with nods back to the classic bands while still retaining a modern fresh sound. The singer is quite brilliant with power and emotion to bring lots of strength to the songs. Powerful indeed. Speaking of brilliance, the production is very strong as well, I think that overall it is very easy to see that this is a great product. Five tracks are on the EP, they are quite varied but high tempo, energy and passion are going through like a red thread binding the songs together into one coherent whole.

And it is one good EP as well, not just well produced. The songs are great, all of them. It is a debut that shows more than many other debuts. Sure I have heard some great debuts in my days and it though it may not be the best one it is still amongst the finest debuts I have heard to date. Not only that, it of course promises a lot for future releases and one can be forgiven for not being able to wait for an upcoming album as that would be a real treat (hopefully).

Well, I find myself impressed by these guys as they are really great. I think all the songs are really strong and none really stand out, although I think the single track called Insane is the one that probably goes down best with the larger crowds, the most commercially viable track I suppose. But as I stated none of the track really stand out from the others in my opinion, it is impressive. So, they are maybe not ahead of their time and particularly world shattering but they are really good and I can recommend that you look closer at it.

HHHHHHH