Reinxeed - The light 2.5/5
Reviewed: 1-9-09
Tracklist:
1. The light
2. Legacy
3. Great hall of Reinxeed
4. Magic night
5. Eternity
6. Shyrheny
7. Northern sky
8. Kingdom fall
9. End of this journey
10. Heavenly fire
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From out of Vindeln, Sweden comes a relatively unknown melodic metal band called Reinxeed. And when I say metal band, I mean one-man metal band. Tommy Johansson is the creator of Reinxeed and aside from being the vocalist, guitarist and keyboardist; he also played every instrument on his debut CD entitled ‘The light’. That’s pretty impressive. Since then, Tommy Johansson has secured the services of 3 musicians; a drummer, bass player and lead guitarist for live gigs and for any future recordings.
Reinxeed play speedy melodic metal with neo-classical and symphonic elements; bands which first come to mind as a comparison would be early Heavenly, early Dreamtale, early Celesty and early Thy Majestie. Reinxeed’s music follows the basic neo-classical melodic metal structure, so there is nothing here that hasn’t been heard before. The production on this release is very good, again I’m impressed, and is another tick on Tommy Johansson’s “score sheet”.
This guy is a very talented musician and decent songwriter, I mean you must be pretty darn talented if you can be a one-man band and be able to play every instrument and be able to sing as well. Tommy has the ability to write catchy songs, but again there is nothing ground-breaking. As a vocalist, I guess it’s up to personal preference. He is a nice singer, but not the most talented in the metal world. Normally delivering a mid-range tune throughout the CD, he often breaks out into the extreme high-pitched screams, which can get quite irritating after a while.
As for the tracks on ‘The light’, as mentioned before the songs are all well written and have some great and creative hooks, riffs, solos and melody. As with any neo-classical metal band, there is an over-use of the keyboards, but in this case it was more tolerable than his way too high screams. Good tracks worth mentioning include the title track “The light”, “Shyrheny”, “Northern sky”, and the 10-minute + opus “End of this journey”.
Overall I am very impressed with the amount of talent Tommy Johansson has. He is a quite talented person and musician. Needing more work with his vocals is the primary concern for the next release. That and there also needs a bit of work with the songwriting; which seems to be lacking in a few areas. Reinxeed is in the unfortunate position of being an unknown band, so there is always going to be a more well-known melodic neo-classical metal band that will take preference over this band. That being said, 'The light' is good, but nothing great. For anyone who likes speedy neo-classical metal, this should be a nice addition to your collection.
SEAN
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