Ravenscry
100

It seems ravens are pretty popular these days considering that this is the third Raven-something that I review this year, the other two has received pretty good ratings. This Italian band is actually the second Italian Raven-something and the third female fronted Raven band this year. So it seems as there is a trend there, this is the only one of these ravens that we have reviewed before – we wrote about the debut album in 2012, and our reviewer didn’t seem overly infatuated with what was on offer. It has been a while since then and apparently they have once again made history with a fresh new sound, they must have made history with the two albums that preceded this one as the first one didn’t appear to be history making. Naturally I checked some tracks from those albums and the history making for fresh sound must have been the tracks that weren’t easily found on YouTube. I also noticed that this one doesn’t sound very fresh compared to the tracks I did listen to from previous works.

Female fronted melodic metal is the genre, with catchy choruses and pretty typical structures in general. Some mock-opera and mock-progressive stuff are heard here and there, decent but not impressive production and song writing that hardly gets you gasping for air from the surprise of hearing something new and exciting. Pretty unimpressive from the novelty standpoint, and the vocals are pretty poor with blandness as the most prominent feature.

Not much variation over an album that is 41 minutes long, too much if you ask me, the promotion people doesn’t agree I think. “Their beautifully melodic and larger than life take on the metal genre, has been hooking millions of listeners for nearly a decade now” says the press material, strange that their Wikipedia site is only 205 words as compared with Ayreon’s that is 3577 words or female fronted countrymen Temperance from whom I have not seen any claim of millions, their Wikipedia is 577 words so they should probably have tens of millions of listener judging by that. Usually when press materials speak of tours and vague grandiose claims it is because they haven’t really accomplished anything major. If they reach millions, why don’t they have a big label behind them? Say what you want about labels but if you are interesting you get better promotion and sell more if you have a label behind you.

We wrote that the lacks charisma and character in 2012 and I think that is as true in 2020, the vocalist is tiresome to listen to and the songs are bland and ordinary. There isn’t much that excite me about this album, it is more like looking at myself in the mirror, pretty unimpressive, bland, boring, without personality, bland is probably the best word for it – both my reflection and the album. It is fair to say that I have heard better and it is also fair to say that this will be as forgotten as that album we reviewed all those years ago – I hope that Giulia and her compatriots manage to make something that can make history and that they actually will reach millions of fans and someone will fill their Wikipedia site with information and that they will woe me with their next album, but now it is only the promotion material that wants us to believe that. As indifferent as I feel when listening to this album I rarely feel but this one has me insanely bored. The best thing I can say about it is that it isn’t bad, but not being bad isn’t really a strong selling point.

HHHHHHH