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Frontiers [Release date: 16.09.22]
Ginevra is a kind of Europa League supergroup. Not exactly Champions League status. Not yet anyway.
Kristian Fhyr, vocalist/ songwriter with Seventh Crystal was the instigator, and with the label’s help, the rest of the band… drummer Jimmy (H.E.A.T.) Jay, bassman Magnus (Nordic Union/Eclipse) Ulfstedt and celebrated guitarist/ songwriter/ producer Magnus (too many to mention) Karlsson coalesced around him.
It’s hard to escape the impression that we’ve got a melodic metal version of Survivor or more recently, Tyketto, on our hands here. The album is filled with calculated, torqued up guitars and uncluttered, but busy arrangements. Jay’s fluid bassline and Ulfstedt’s percussive rhtyhms provide an anchor for a series of melodically satisfying songs.
Nothing ever stands still, it’s an album always on the move. Like ‘Unbreakable’ and ‘Apologise’, two tightly structured songs pivoting on Karlsson’s imaginative axework. Riffy, upfront when it needs to be, laid back, purposeful and expansive elsewhere. There are echoes of Survivor and Tyketto constantly surfacing in these two pacey songs as well as others, especially in in Fhyr’s vocal timbre and phrasing.
Shades of choral symphonic rock break through from time to time, just to remind us we’re standing in the Melodic Metal section.
Guest vocalist, the up and coming Chez Kane adds her feisty vocals to ‘Masquerade’, effectively lighting an emotional fuse that burns down to an explosion of epic soloing from Karlsson, signalling an upward gearshift into a climactic, all hands on deck, kitchen sink finish.
‘Brokenhearted”s intro owes something to Survivor’s ‘Eye Of The Tiger’, suggesting the Metal has been dropped from Melodic along the way, but no, big budget number, ‘We Belong To The Stars’, metal to its core, immediately follows, with an arrangement as tightly woven as a chainmail suit.
It’s an interesting album, with something for everyone who counts Frontiers as one of their favourite labels. ****
Review by Brian McGowan
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