Released By : Underground Symphony
Genre : Symphonic Power Metal, Melodic Metal
Links : http://www.myspace.com/hypersonicmetal
Tracklist:
01. The Last Apocalypse
02. My Spirit Free
03. Rebirth
04. Winter Melodies
05. Wheels of Fire
06. A Lovely Creature
07. A Beautiful Dream
08. Heaven
09. Atlantis Treasure
10. Diamond Hope
With the large amount of albums I have in my backlog queue for both listening and reviewing I’ve had to be a little more choosy than normal lately. This could have easily meant that I skipped this one but a couple of things I had read elsewhere had piqued my interest enough to at least check it out. After a handful of listens I have to say I’m glad I did as FALLEN MELODIES is actually a pretty darn good album.
The band plays a very symphonic style of power metal with a mixture of both male and female vocals. Where these Italians differ from a lot of bands in the genre with female singers is that Alessia Rapisarda doesn’t stick to the usual formula of orchestral clean vocals but instead actually opts for a more traditional metal influenced vocal, with the occasional operatic moment added just for color purposes. This is the main appeal of the band to me personally and I guess the reality is that there isn’t a whole lot else here to get all that excited about.
I do however enjoy their songwriting style that sits mainly in the slower paced end of the power metal genre with plenty of fluffy symphonic keyboards too. Combine that with the fact that most of the choruses on the album are extremely melodic and it starts to become clear what the appeal is.
The intro track THE LAST APOCALYPSE is a very movie score sounding two and a half minutes of music, and while it is done quite well it does go on a little too long for my liking. Once that’s over and done with though the best tune of the album MY SPIRIT FREE is let loose, it is a very keyboard based fluffy European power metal track and is very enjoyable. Title track WINTER MELODIES is an interesting one as it adds a very discreet layer of gothic metal influence, not enough to change the fact that it’s a power metal song but just enough to change things up a little bit. A BEAUTIFUL DREAM is a ballad based tune that would appeal to the AOR crowd and sounds like something you would expect from ROBIN BECK or someone like that.
There’s not much more that HYPERSONIC need to do in order to garner some success, the only improvements will come with time spend playing together and writing tunes. FALLEN MELODIES may not be an amazing album by any stretch, but it offers up something a little different from the usual female fronted power metal stuff and should be good enough to fans of the genre. For me personally, I think I’ll wait to hear what they can do next before truly judging the band, but in the meantime I am pretty happy with this album and willing to give it a tick of approval, well, for what that’s worth anyway.
Written By ZeeZee
Rating : 7/10
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