Artist: Midnattsol
Title: The Metamorphosis Melody
Type: Album
Label: Napalm Records

Let me take you to a world where the grass is always a shade greener and buildings a rosy pink, damsels are fair and wear long, flowing gowns bright of colour, and sit by the window in their castle waiting for their handsome and charming prince to ride up on horseback and ask for a hand in marriage. Yep, I’d rather not either, but somewhere in this world lies Midnattsol. A world where everything is lovely and wrapped in cotton wool and things always end in the happy ever after. The Metamorphosis Melody can easily be described as a pleasant album. I know I have a knack for making nice things sound bad and vice versa, but you can’t really dress the word pleasant up as an insult. I mean it is all quite easy on the ears, it is inoffensive and there are some really quite nice elements to the music. I’ll start with the obvious vocals of Carmen Espeneas which at times have a nice wistfulness to them, and while they don’t quite leave me ‘Spellbound’ they do float across the music mellifluously especially on this track, which works some symphonic pomp into the heavy chorus. Her dulcet tones aren’t a million miles away from her sister Liv Kristine of Leaves’ Eyes, although I don’t find them as distinctive.

There are some beautiful melodies to be heard here; ‘Kong Velemon’s Kamp’ takes a rather wistful melody and sends it soaring into a wall of crunching guitars and heavy drums, while with its acoustic guitars, ‘Goodbye’ really has a nice renaissance feel to it. Carmen’s vocals sound particularly sweet on this number and I find them particularly beguiling. Other tracks seem to be driven by fairly unimaginative power metal riffs that kind of blend into one another and fail to spark my interest even on repeat listens. None of this is unpleasant, it’s just not very interesting and after this review it will be tossed on the pile of other mediocre female-fronted symphonic/gothic/power/generic metal bands out there. As with too many bands in this genre, the music at times seems to be an after-thought – something in the background, and again as with many others, the vocals just aren’t strong enough to make it work. A band like Leaves’ Eyes has a nice balance between interesting music and a vocalist who isn’t technically brilliant but has a distinctive voice and uses it well.

Perhaps I am being a little harsh here, and in all honesty this isn’t the worst thing I’ve heard. If you like female fronted symphonic metal then check this out for sure. It’s nothing outstanding, but it’s a nice enough listen if a little twee.

http://www.myspace.com/midnattsolfolk