Ureas
The Black Heart Album

Ureas are back with a new album, their second that follows a long time after the first. It is a band with people that are pretty well known, LePond known from Symphony X, Jacob Hansen the well-known producer plays guitar, Per Johansson known from several bands amongst others Fate is doing the male vocals. The Hansens are producing the album, so it certainly looks like they have many ingredients for creating a good strong album. I don’t think the cover art looks very exciting though.

Musically it is a wide-ranging album in terms of style, gothic, progressive, melodic metal are words that can be used to describe it. The production bears the Hansen studios trademark sound, it is very strong and they use both male and female vocals to make the sound dynamic. The album is quite varied, maybe too much varied as I think many will tend to see it as a bit incoherent and fragmented. The strength of the album, and the weakness of it, can be seen in this variation. The playing time of the album is acceptable as well; I think we can conclude that it is a relatively well-made album.

There are strengths and weaknesses of this album, and they are both pretty obvious. Like the strange noises in the female vocal parts of the fourth track, I heard it in the car and I thought it was screeching brakes from mine or some other car. The female vocal parts in that song is great if you discount that little niggle. Then there are some great songs, some little weaker songs but I think the main problem of the album is the fragmented nature of the album, I would have liked to see something a little bit more coherent. The album is overall good, I think it is at least average but being of such fragmented nature it still lacks that edge that the great songs the album has would have given it had it been more coherent.

There are some really strong tracks like my favourite The Seven Deadly Sins, that track is excellent. Then I also like the fourth track Seal This Moment that I also enjoy, especially the female vocals even though there are some sound issues in that track. A third track that I also like is Shut the Fuck Up, something the band maybe tells me to do but if they do it with that song I have no issue with it. In the end I find this something of an up and down album, great in parts and pretty bad in other parts, it all balances out to become a good album. You might want to check it out so that you can enjoy at least those tracks, even though the album is a bit too fragmented to really shine.

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