Papyrus

Here comes another Power Metal band into the already very crowded scene. It's not easy to bring attention to a new band nowadays if you ask me, and with all the competition we can easely get lost by all these new releases. The album starts with a very good song, first thing that stroke me, the vocals, during the verse I was amazed how the singer could sing like Thomas Rettke (Heaven's Gate), but slowly after during the chorus the vocals changed radically to something else, interesting but also confusing. The second thing I quickly noticed is that the production is weird, although powerful from time to time, it doesn't seem to be just right. The third and probably most annoying thing of all would be the keyboards and their way too "heavy" use. First the sample used don't go with Eterna's music or style, plus they're sometimes mixed way to much in front. In the end the first song is a catchy one that was able to attract my attention despite the mentionned keyboards and strange production. The second song sounds about the same as the first one, with a good catchy chorus and better use of the keyboards. I'm starting to worry when I reach track 3, as the band start to reveal a more progressive side than before. The keyboards again uses way too much space in the overall sound spectrum (for my taste that is) and this song confirms me what I've started to notice since the beginning : drumming is a catastrophe, not only their sound is weird but they tend to be to robotic and they lack presence. So it goes on and on during the album, the guitars and the vocals are really cool, but everything varies way too much, from prog metal to straight power metal, hard rock, with even some folk elements then an there. It would seem that the band is starving to find an identity, like for exemple the ever changing vocal. There's at least 5 different types of vocals, but since I didn't keep track it could be much more than this. I'd say that there are very interesting moments in this album, but there's also way too much variety of styles. Although I might love and intro or a good chorus, I find myself having trouble to love an entire song. The vocals are changing on every song and sometimes even during the same song, bringing a lot of confusion, even though they're pretty good most of the time. But in the end its an album that can be easely forgotten after you finished playing it, and I'm sure this band can do better than this. Maybe in focusing more on one style so they wouldn't sound like 10 different bands and attract a bit more interest from the listener which can frankly be quickly lost.For Power / Prog fans, but I'd suggest you try it before you buy.