Sleeping Romance - Alba Review

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Concise Summary:

Sleeping Romance is a relatively new symphonic metal band from Italy, and Alba is their second full-length album. Alba follows a similar pattern to most Italian symphonic/power metal; a lot of instrumentation on each track, clean female singing, and very impressive guitar/drum/bass work. Overall, I thought the album was pretty good. My one main complaint is that the singing seemed pretty dead. There didn't seem to be much sparkle in Federica Lanna's vocals; it sounded like she was just hitting the notes to hit the notes - there wasn't much emotion behind the vocals. That isn't to say Federica isn't a good vocalist, because she is. I just thought that she could have "owned" the vocals more instead of just hitting the right notes. On the other hand, I think that type of singing could be a style, and I will admit I haven't heard that much before; kudos to the band if that's what they were going for. However, it does get kind of distracting, so I would recommend throwing more vibrato and emotion into the vocals at certain points, because continually hitting perfect notes with little to no vibrato gets somewhat oppressive after a while.

My Rating: 8 out of 10


Highlights:
  • Beautiful instrumentals - some of this album sounds like a movie soundtrack, it's that good!
  • Very good guitar work; the drums and bass were impressive as well
  • Excellent songwriting diversity and technicality 
  • Consistent and coherent sound to the album
Lowlights:
  • Vocals often seem dull - they lack emotion (I mentioned the other side of my thoughts on this earlier)
  • Sometimes there are too many different instruments playing at once and it becomes overwhelming.
Favorite Songs:
  • Forgiveness
  • Across the Sea
  • Everything Behind
  • Alba (mainly because of the Dream Theater-esque crazy time-signatures, and because of the awesome instrumentation). 
More Info:

Sleeping Romance Official Website

Sleeping Romance Facebook

Sleeping Romance Twitter

Sleeping Romance Encyclopaedia Metallum 


Comments

  1. A.J. SpaudeNovember 8, 2017 at 12:02 PM

    Hey guys follow me @BPMetalReviews on Facebook and Twitter to stay updated on when the latest reviews drop. Please comment below any albums you want me to review!

    ReplyDelete

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