Artist: Amaranthe
Title: Amaranthe
Type: LP
Label: Spinefarm

Right, let’s get this off my chest straight away; Amaranthe is a six piece band, with three dedicated vocalists, and only three musicians? Yep, I did read it right. Weird combination, really more akin to a rap act where you’d have the main rapper, the two sycophants to grab their crotch whilst saying “oh yeah” and “say what”, and three blokes variously scratching records and pressing buttons in the background. Instead on their home page the various members of Amaranthe list their roles as female vocals, clean vocals, screams, drums, bass, and the multi-skilled keyboards & guitars. How does that translate to an act that describes itself as a power/melodic/death metal band? Read on.

Album opener ‘Leave Everything Behind’ frankly sounds too busy, trying to throw too much into the mix. The opening is pure power metal bombast, before some screamed vocals (but not too harsh, oh no, that might be scary) swap lines with the clean male vocals, before the female vocals take over. Now, there’s nothing wrong with mixing vocal styles, and Amaranthe may well be aiming at the Nightwish/Lacuna Coil market, but something doesn’t gel. The vocals of extremely easy on the eye front woman Elize are just too generic, without a real hint of metal or rock. Her well sustained and clean vocals could just as easily be gracing any number or euro dance tracks without any change in delivery. Next up is the single ‘Hunger’ which starts with a keyboard line that sounds like it escaped from an early nineties Nintendo platform game, before the same generic sounds blast out, swapped clean and growled male vocals building up to the poppy female lead, all played over efficient and extremely well timed guitars, drums and bass.

That this album is well produced is not in doubt; every note has been polished to a mirror brightness; vocals are clear, layered, and loaded with effects; the instruments are played with an undoubted proficiency. The trouble is, to my ears, this is not really a metal album. It sounds manufactured, and more of a testimony to the engineers and writers then to the band members. To be honest, just taking out the harsher male vocals would leave Sweden with an album of Eurovision Song Contest contenders. Hey, after the comedy relief of Lordi a couple of years ago, and the actual cleanliness of the “screams”, you wouldn’t even have to do that on most tracks. I would challenge any listener to the album to listen to pseudo-title track ‘Amaranthine’ without imagining it followed by the dulcet tones of Sir Terry Wogan saying “and over to the judges.”

Why they are signed to Spinefarm, the home of such excellent acts as the legendary Killing Joke and Rammstein I do not know. I can only assume they are some sort of taster that kids can try on their way to real metal without being frightened away by anything too edgy or scary.

http://www.myspace.com/amaranthemetal