If you like your symphonic rock and metal and let’s face it who doesn’t on occasion even if you tend to inhabit other genres there’s something rather impressive about that style of music when it all comes together well. But like any form of music there has to be balance and there has to be the songs to back up the musicianship.
Finnish Metallers ‘Velvet Ocean’ find themselves entering a genre that has plenty of major players and so this, their debut, is bound to come under a lot of scrutiny. It is well pitched though – taking as it does a core of say Evanescence and Nightwish and adding some rather savvy Pop touches to the mix making it nice an melodic and accessible but with just that touch of mystery and darkness at the edges. And it works so well!
There’s a nice production job here to and a lovely balance in the songs themselves, some crunch, plenty of melody and some rather tasty instrumentation. The mix too is resolute and clear.
Some of my top picks stand out for very different reasons though – I love the vocal on ‘It’s So Hard’ and the emotion conjured up by ‘Broken’, but the bass on ‘Butterfly’ is something else and ‘Innocent Eyes’ you could easily see doing an Evanescence job on the charts.
You’ll love the mix of depth and the accessibility here – it’s a winning combination. A great debut.
4/5