Silent Opera
Immortal Beauty

When looking at this band’s website and the press section I notice that the ratings of their debut album Immortal Beauty are out of this world I mean 98/100, and two times 9/10 is quite amazing but then when I look at the sites and the reviews themselves and the rest of the reviews close by I get more confused because at the site where they were awarded 98/100 the lowest, lowest score was 94, had we used such ratings at hallowed I think 94 probably would have been the highest score I had ever awarded if I had even found an album that good, there were several albums there that had 100/100 ratings, that is just nuts and the story was the same with the other sites they had linked to, when doing a search for the album the reviews turned up were a little less generous with what they thought. Lets just make it clear that I am not dissing this band in any way just pointing out some background facts, and while I am on it there were a lot of people on youtube commenting on the figure of the singer, you can stop worrying now, she is no longer in the band as she has been replaced by a singer called Aria, and by the way, isn’t it what we hear that is the point in music?

The band themselves are from Italy and their dream seems to be to follow in the footsteps of early Nightwish with soprano vocals and symphonic styled power metal, maybe their new singer is more like Anette so they already has gone that road. Not being mean, just trying to describe the style of their music and the fact that the singer has been changed, I don’t know what it means in reality though. But as I said power metal with symphonic undertones and a soprano voice with some very few additions of male vocals, it is the female voice that is the dominating one. And some would probably call it grande and epic and I see nothing really wrong in that, have a look at the long epic that ends the album for instance, it is quite grande. The sound is good, the female singer is good so on the production level they have done a good work on this eleven track album that plays for 53 and a half minute before ending, or starting over if you have it on repeat which I have at the moment.

I must admit that I adore female fronted metal and operatic voices is great so the initial reaction of this album was one of joy. But then thinking about it and listening more, what does this album really offer? It is good I will not contend that, but what does it offer that hasn’t already been done? Is it better than Nightwish, Operatika, Niobeth or whatever other operatic soprano band I enjoy? no it isn’t. Has she an angelic voice that melts everything? no she has not, she is quite ordinary if I am honest. Do they add any new fresh angle to the music in their approach? no they do not. They offer quite typical music for a female fronted symphonic band, nothing fresh and even though they are good, they sure aren’t good enough to really stand out in a genre that is crowding up and doing so rapidly, one need to be either established already or offer something much better than this today to stand out. It may be unfair, Nightwish did Angels Fall First and struck gold with an album not that much better than this and Within Temptation, Tristania, or what have you but the thing is they did it when there were practically none other around, now there are so now the demands are higher and sure this is fine to listen to but it will never be anything but a good album, there are great albums nearby that I’d rather play if it were my choice.

So it is a good album that probably would have made a good impact had it seen the light of day 15 years ago, but now it will never make any more impact than my footprint in the snow.