Album review : ONE DESIRE – Live With The Shadow Orchestra

Frontiers [release date 21.04.23]

Rising Finnish band, One Desire return with a live album.

What is it with rock/ metal bands and orchestras?
The ambition to match up the two has been realised regularly ever since most of us can remember. Deep Purple, Procol Harum, Nightwish, Metallica, Scorpions and many others have climbed aboard that bandwagon over the years.

Now Metal band, One Desire, have partnered with Finland’s Shadow Symphony Orchestra, releasing Live With… this month. The band’s grandiose, symphonically framed melodic rock was always a prime candidate for this type of scaled up treatment, but in having only two albums’ worth of material to play with, the idea might seem a bit premature.

Still, both albums contain some cracking tracks. The material’s relentless rifferama, keyboard hooks and energetic performances play right into this setting.

The band’s heavy hitters, ‘Apologise’, ‘Shadowman’ and ‘Hurt’ translate easily to the classical environment, and as well as those standouts, ‘After You’re Gone’, ‘This Is Where The Heartache Begins’ and ‘Heroes’ survive the most rigorous of classical musical examinations. They comprise the kind of impassioned stuff that demands a big canvas, and so naturally feel at home here.

Elsewhere, the bombast and the production polish obscure some decent tunes, which at times are just not robust enough to withstand full blown orchestral power.

All that aside, we just wish they’d ditched the vacuous voiceover intros. They are clearly aiming to add a dramatic, theatrical touch, but they’re inclined to disrupt the music’s continuity and momentum. ***1/2

Review by Brian McGowan

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Power Plays w/c 9 December 2024

In this sequence we play ‘The Best of 2024′ GRTR! reviewer selections

Featured Albums w/c 9 December 2024

09:00-12:00 The Best of 2024 (Melodic Rock)
12:00-13:00 The Best of 2003-2024 (Melodic Hard Rock)
14:00-16:00 The Best of 2024 (Singer Songwriter)