Sebastien
Act of Creation

Sebastien are returning with their third album, one that they call Act of Creation. It follows earlier albums that have received pretty good reviews from us with their first being most positively reviewed. Act of Creation doesn’t look very exciting if you look at the artwork and albums with fourteen tracks usually tend to be on the long side, and I don’t think this is an exception to that rule. The Czech band, one of few internationally known bands from that nation, should have kept it shorter I think.

On the musical side I think they can be described as melodic hard rock/metal, the focus is on the melodies and there are some distinct and catchy choruses on this album. The production is good; the sound is modern and clean – excellent in fact. The vocalist is not as excellent as the production; he is okay but doesn’t really stand out compared with other vocalists in the genre. With an hour playing time it is a bit on the long side, and that is probably this album’s biggest Achilles heel – they should have made it shorter.

Fourth track Amy is probably the highlight of the album for me, but there are more, they all come in line after the opening title track has ended. The first half of the album is very strong while the second half can be described as quite boring, it is really easy to loose interest in the album towards the end of it. I think that is quite unfortunate because when it is at its best it is quite excellent, and to me it feels like an album that should have been better.

The conclusion has to be that it is a good album overall, some of the songs are excellent but there are too many songs and the album too long. It feels like they ruin a great album by making too many songs with too little variation and too little depth. It feels like an album where the true potential of the band isn’t quite realised and they end up making an album that isn’t quite as good as it could have been. Perhaps they should have focused a bit more on the act of creation, create less but better songs.

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