Mirrored in Secrecy
Day of Renewal

They do have a quite interesting album cover and a nicely laid out booklet to accompany their debut album this German sextet. Day of Renewal it is called and like most albums I have received from Echozone it does not seem to be that widely reviewed and mostly in German writing media but the reviews I have found has been mainly positive which could be a good sign. They are four guys and two girls in this band of whom one guy and a girl is singing. Other than that I don’t really know much about these guys more than the fact that their album cover is a bit thought provoking although I think the booklet should have more pages.

Their music is gothic metal with a beauty and beast kind of structure, and they paint a canvas of many different emotions ranging from darkness to light and all of that parables you can use to illustrate a range. The music is otherwise taken from the easy guides to gothic metal as they do not really thread down any paths not already tried and tested several times before. Their soundscape is excellent and shows for a clean as well as dynamic sound which brings out the best in the contrasting singers. The growls are however not so great, the male vocals are a bit bland as well but that is not anything that really matters in this case. The ten tracks plays for 40 minutes which is a good playing time for an album, especially if it sounds good.

So does it sound good? It sure does, the dynamics and energy along with excellent musicianship definitely makes this album a good listen. I actually don’t really care that their music isn’t really conjuring up any new musical magic out of their top hats, it is too good to really care about that and especially considering that it is a debut album. I do think however that they have to pull something else out of their hats if they want to remain interesting because if they try and continue down the path they seem to have started upon they will find themselves quite boring within one or two albums from now. But for this album it really works, it may not feel particularly fresh but damn it is good.

Best is the opening title track and the second track Mortality, the opener has good and catchy energy while the other song has a great moody feel to it. These are the two that makes the biggest impression on me, the rest of the songs are very good as well but not as good as the opening duo. This can also sometimes be a problem when an album starts with the top song(s) and the songs that follow are not as good as those, it often makes for a disappointing end result, not in this case though as the ending eight tracks are very good as well and keep interests up.

So, a very good debut album with some really memorable songs but one that feels a bit typical of the genre and you cannot quite overlook that when thinking about the album in depth, but in this case it is good enough musically to overshadow that feel. However, in a longer perspective if they keep sticking within the format they risk becoming very dull, but they do have every possibility to make something really interesting in the future as well considering the great voice of Julia and how she can carry some songs with her voice that suits this album perfectly. I can highly recommend that you, the gothic fan, take a closer look at this album, it will be worth it.