Francis
A Million Years Of Loneliness

Dark times perhaps, A Million Years of Loneliness that is, that has to be a bit of a dark time I suppose. Perhaps also a little bit drab to be lonely that long, and A Million Years of Loneliness is the second album by Moldovan band Francis. A band from an exotic place in terms of the music we usually get at this webzine and their second album has a pretty interesting title and an artwork I find quite interesting as well. That means it is an album that certainly looks the part, but what about the music then? The album was given a raving review by a metal site that always gives good ratings, full score which I have to say is completely wrong – no matter how you look at it this album cannot be that good.

Ranging from calmer and more melodic to heavy and hardcorish things, the music of this album may seem quite dynamic at first glance as it spans a wide range between the heavier and the softer. Clean and growly vocals as well but it feels rather torn and the heavy parts and the melodic parts feels like two sides of a coin rather than a dynamic range in a musical album – they feel like parts of different albums almost. So I would say that this album doesn’t feel very dynamic at all, and besides that I don’t like the growls. The sound is modern and quite good, besides the feel of fragmentation of course. Clean vocals are quite alright as well but the idea of the music feels like melodic death metal or metalcore that doesn’t really stand out.

An album built on good ideas and with good strong components, but not a very good album. They don’t really manage to build something good from these components and in the end we have a pretty drab album to listen to – an album that never really grabs me. It isn’t bad and it even starts really well before the growling begins, some melodic parts are quite good as well but it does never really take off. I have a hard time seeing that anyone will really find this to be more appealing than much of the numerous melodic death metal or metalcore albums that exists out there – for me this is an album that will just drown in the never ending stream of similarly styled albums.

Brings nothing exciting to the stages, it is an album that is built on good ideas but ends up being a pretty poor idea. Exciting location, good title and good artwork just isn’t enough to do any impression on the world of metal. I think Francis has some things going for them, but they do not manage to get those things going for them with this album.

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