Heel - Evil days 2/5
Reviewed: 11-23-07
Tracklist:
1. Heel
2. Blood sacrifice
3. Evil days
4. Paradise
5. Turn your back on me
6. No longer in darkness
7. Stay
8. Take your way
9. Northern light
10. Can't love everyone
11. Always
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Rivel Records has become one of the more promising labels this decade, giving us releases from Divinefire, Essence of Sorrow, Majestic Vanguard and Audiovision, to name some of the most recent. Heel's debut 'Evil days' is their latest release, a melodic metal CD with some passages into power metal and also hard rock. Overall, it reminds me most of CDs from bands like At Vance, Masterplan, Last Tribe, Leverage, Planet Alliance, Rob Rock, and there are just a few spots when Kotipelto comes to mind.
Heel is fronted by David Henriksson, who was the vocalist on the first 2 CDs from Sweden's Insania ('World of ice' and 'Sunrise in riverland'), and his vocals have improved since his Insania days. The CD's production is great, some sweet guitar solos are thrown in and there are a few faster songs for power metal fans. Actually, my favorite is track 4 "Paradise", as its one of the speedy songs, has a catchy rhythm and the chorus is terrific. A good portion of the CD, whether the pure melodic metal songs or the remainder of the faster songs, is okay to good, but fans of the aforementioned bands have heard this many times before and it feels like Heel didn't even attempt something adventurous. Really, songs of this kind have been done much better already.
I also have a problem with each and every song that drifts into hard rock. Simply put, they just don't click with me and in the end, I don't like the wide variety that Heel offers up. I think this will be a problem for other fans of melodic metal too, as At Vance, Masterplan, Last Tribe, Planet Alliance and Rob Rock (for examples) don't usually spend very much time (if any) in the hard rock realm. 'Evil days' is still a decent start, but Heel's going to have to up their quality and even originality if they expect to get some serious attention.
CLINT
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