Voices From Beyond - The Gates Of Madness
Hailing from Italy, Voices From Beyond are an interesting breed of melodic metal. Taking melodic metal vocals and combining them with death and thrash metal riffs, along with dark themes such as HP Lovecraft that is similar to a sense that King Diamond did with his albums, Voices From Beyond have created their own brand of horror melodic metal. Songs like "Terror Screen" and "Time Dream" are more melodic metal influenced with the way the guitars chug along with the semi operatic vocals expected of power or melodic metal. The drumming is fast and sometimes lost in the riffs, especially with the cymbal use. Then there's tracks such as "The Chosen" and "The Cult Of Madness" are the heavily death metal influenced in the way the chords are dark, sludgy, and tinged with pure evil. Plus the solos are pretty impressive and the vocals add a great melodic quality overall. "Voices From Beyond" and "The Key Of Doom" have some thrash influence in the way they guitars chug along mixed with great solos and then break into the blast beats with plenty of heavy licks that range from influences of Slayer to Megadeth. Altogether it creates a very interesting and varied mix of metal, all toped with decadent horror themes.
A lot of the music is straight to the face for the listener, but some like "From Beyond" have much more subtle openings. The funny thing is while this may be the only subtle track, it's also the only one to feature loud, aggressive screaming compared to the melodic singing, as well as some impressive falsetto work that will certainly remind fans of King Diamond. Lyrically, the album tackles plenty of ideas from the dark side, but doesn't overdramatize them or make them ten times more scary by adding death vocals or creepy, organ orchestrations that risk becoming very cheesy and laughable. For the most part, expect a lot of melodic guitar passages amongst the heavier stuff, but nothing too ear piercing or annoying. This isn't exactly the standard melodic metal band, but Voices From Beyond have only a few limited tricks up their sleeves. Sure, there's a lot of great death metal and thrash metal songs, but when the clean vocals come in, they kind of lose their dark, harsh touch. The band's attempt on merging death and thrash with melodic metal still needs work. Their attempt, however, is a great for a debut album in the sense that they know how to perform their instruments to a degree of different genres, and hopefully will expand on their work both musically and vocally.
A lot of the music is straight to the face for the listener, but some like "From Beyond" have much more subtle openings. The funny thing is while this may be the only subtle track, it's also the only one to feature loud, aggressive screaming compared to the melodic singing, as well as some impressive falsetto work that will certainly remind fans of King Diamond. Lyrically, the album tackles plenty of ideas from the dark side, but doesn't overdramatize them or make them ten times more scary by adding death vocals or creepy, organ orchestrations that risk becoming very cheesy and laughable. For the most part, expect a lot of melodic guitar passages amongst the heavier stuff, but nothing too ear piercing or annoying. This isn't exactly the standard melodic metal band, but Voices From Beyond have only a few limited tricks up their sleeves. Sure, there's a lot of great death metal and thrash metal songs, but when the clean vocals come in, they kind of lose their dark, harsh touch. The band's attempt on merging death and thrash with melodic metal still needs work. Their attempt, however, is a great for a debut album in the sense that they know how to perform their instruments to a degree of different genres, and hopefully will expand on their work both musically and vocally.
- Terror Screen
- Those Chosen
- Voices From The Beyond
- Time Dream
- The Cult Of Madness
- Don't Change Your Mind
- Day Of Rebirth
- The Key Of Doom
- Welcome You
- From Beyond
