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A unique Progressive album that gets a little too passionate.-
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| Stream of Passion: Darker Days |
Progressive Metal, Progressive Rock
Napalm Records
July 5th, 2011
- Lost - 5:27
- Reborn - 3:37
- Collide - 5:20
- The Scarlet Mark - 3:41
- Spark - 2:36
- Our Cause - 4:43
- Darker Days - 4:32
- Broken - 4:47
- This Moment - 3:55
- Closer - 4:37
- The Mirror - 3:34
- Nadie Love - 3:04
- The World is Ours - 3:49
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| Review Information |
Release length: 53:42
Review posted on July 5th, 2011
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| | Overall Score: 8.5/10 |
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| Discography |
Discography covers all information available up to day of review and is updated if future albums are reviewed. |
| Full-Length(s): |
Embrace the Storm (2005) • The Flame Within (2009) • Darker Days (2011)
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| Single(s): |
Wherever You Are (2005) • Out in the Real World (2006) • Spark (2010)
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| Live CD(s): |
Live in the Real World (2006)
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| DVD(s): |
Live in the Real World (2006)
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| Review |
When it comes to bands that feature clean female singing, I'm typically at a loss and immediately put them at the bottom of the rack. This stems mostly because of the oversaturation of female fronted Gothic Metal/Rock bands that sound generic and like each other band, pack no unique material, and typically have a vocalist who can sing well, or thinks she can sing well. Luckily, there are some bands that break that mold in the Gothic Metal scene, as well as just make the world second guess the role of clean singing females in Metal today. Stream of Passion is one of them, and while some can argue the band does share some common ground with Gothic Metal acts, this group, which originally featured legendary musician Arjen Lucassen of Aryeon, has evolved into a strong force of beauty and intensity. With the group's third album, Darker Days, they intend to put every Metal fan in their place and show that female fronted acts that aren't Melodic Death Metal or related heavier styles can infact have that heavier edge and passion to them to stand up and actually mean something beyond the stereotypes we've come to accept today.
While Stream of Passion really does bring something different to their albums, they are sometimes guilty of the more generic approaches to music, but it's justified by truly passionate music that deserves to be performed and heard. A more unique sound and those generic staples are found scattered throughout Darker Days, and it all works to create a truly moving and emotional ride from start to finish. "Lost" establishes this group's more unique intentions with music that does take hold of the more traditional symphonic elements to the style, but at the same time brings in that edge that many acts wouldn't really dare to do by incorporating breakdowns as part as the main parts of the song that will make even the seasons breakdown hater headbang along as they pick up speed and go into a bit of a gothic-era sound established by the classical instruments and operatic vocals with some slight folk elements that give off the sensation of being part of a gypsy caravan, standing out as a whole other musical sound completely void of the traditional Gothic Metal sound before slamming into beautiful, melodic music driven by heavy distorted guitars. This truly inspiring work that bridges unique sounds and ideas with more traditional concepts with the edge those same common ideas lack to create an awe inspiring song with a vocal performance that can bring any man with a conscious for beauty straight to his knees.
What follows on Darker Days is a superb mixture of pure vocal emotion and strong slower Rock passages mixed with enough Progressive Metal passages to give the material a sharp edge that cuts away at the listener. "Collide" becomes the perfect proof, as it blends together a more Rock ballad-approach with a strong Progressive Metal presence and keyboards that set up a beautiful atmosphere, but at the same time don't become the main focus of the entire song. Of course there's the single off this album, "Spark", which is another track that needs to be heard to believe. The vocals give a strong passion to the already emotional music that goes into a more gothic approach, coming off like a gothic ballad one might expect from some kind of Tim Burton film with a gypsy vibe to it. The singing is beautiful, but at the same time so depressing and hard to even begin to ignore. Those same kind of folk instruments that appear in "Lost" return to this song, as well as other tracks such as the following song "Our Cause", which is sung in the band's native tongue so it's a little harder to understand unless you happen to know it well enough to interpret, or have the lyrics and know a good website to interpret them. Either way, the performance is what you'd expect given the previous tracks, and the mixture of slower paced music and the building heavier moments really make this track a very inspiring one that shows the desterity of the group with their musical influences.
But, that lends to the only real problem of this album. There's a strong focus on passion from the band, and while there's a good amount of a metal edge to it, sometimes that edge seems to get lost to constantly reoccuring slower ballad-like passages. Yes, Stream of Passion does have a Progressive Rock sound to them, and it appears quite often, but that Progressive Rock approach sadly seems to take a backseat to everything with the slower, ballad-like material that just keeps popping up. It's not bad, but it just makes up so much of the album that as you go on, you start to get sick of it and crave a little more variety to it. "The Moment" becomes one of the first stronger tracks to incorporate that edge to it and have both Rock and Metal influences without focusing specifically on the slower ballad-like material that "Collide", "Spark" and "Our Cause" really hammer into the listener, among others, and it makes for a welcome breath of fresh air with the album.
Stream of Passion put together a fantastic album who's only complaint you can make is that it becomes too passionate. The band's more aggressive approach to being emotionally appealing and simply moving leads to an abuse of softer ballads that, while good, just come off a bit too much after a while and tend to get a little stale. Other then that, the songs mix together the right ideas of Progressive Rock and Metal well enough to create a staple, attention grabbing album that is much stronger then anything they have done before. If you have yet to check out Stream of Passion, it's worth a shot, even if you are sick of the Evanescence or Nightwish clones clogging the creative pipelines of female fronted Metal of any kind. This band's more unique drive to the Progressive sound, while still retaining a Gothic atmosphere, is really what is needed to shake the cobwebs of the slowly uninspiring styles and set a new, stronger standard for all of them.
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