Vinide
Reveal

Finnish symphonic metal is a phrase that leads the mind towards a band called Nightwish, but there are other alternatives and Vinide is one of those. It is a band that released their first album in 2007, the second in 2014 and now they reveal their third one. They have also managed a few EPs during their years. The third album called Reveal is a conceptual story around artificial intelligence, a mad hero and revelations of sorts, it is a sci-fi story in a symphonic metal guise – something that should appeal to someone like myself as those are both things I like.

Guided by the concept they build this symphonic power metal album that in general sound is rather typical of the genre, but as they focus much on the story they use spoken words in different parts of the album. That is probably what mostly differentiate them from anything else, the vocals are also mixed a bit down in the soundscape making them drown at times, they don’t really seem like they want to tell the story. With a playing time of more than an hour it is also a long album and there isn’t really that much variation and unlike a conceptual album like The Source by Ayreon that I reviewed last year I don’t feel like this story moves forward in a progression through the album.

Having heard this album plenty of times now I can say that there are some great parts like catchy choruses – The Rat and the title track are two great examples of this. I can also say that there are some really terrible parts, like the spoken parts that sort of hack the album to pieces at times and the flow feels disrupted and makes it seem a bit fragmented. My conclusion is that the spoken word parts are without positives and only appears detrimental to the album, I know they are few but they are enough to put me off. Spoken words almost never works as conceptual elements to an album, it seems that they are much harder to do well than to actually tell the story with the music alone.

I wouldn’t claim that this works well as a conceptual story or as a musical creation, it is like something half-finished and they should probably have done many things differently. The album doesn’t really have any good song and while there are some good parts of the album it is not enough to really make me want to listen to it. Neither the story nor the music grabs me and I loose interest somewhere around track five and after that the album ticks away without me really bothering what happens – it kind of feels like it never ever ends.

Just can’t help myself thinking that they should have returned to the drawing board and trimmed away the spoken word crap along with some other less than stellar things that is to be heard on this album. Then they should have taken another look at the mixing in order to create a more interesting soundscape – and if they came out from such a process with about 40-45 minutes remaining on this album it would probably have been something good. I think that I can end by revealing that I think this is an album that works best collecting dust in the shelves of the record company.

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