Sleeping Romance - Alba Review

By -


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

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Unguided - And The Battle Royale Review

By -
Image
Concise Summary: The Unguided is a band that has apparently been around for quite awhile, but I just found them today. After listening to their newest album, And The Battle Royale, I think I'll be listening to more of their music in the future! And The Battle Royale has fairly synth-driven songs with both clean and screamed vocals. The style is almost like synth-driven metalcore, which I think is a pretty cool and unique concept. That being said, And The Battle Royale doesn't display much style diversity - most of the album is pretty much only has that metalcore-ish sound. As a result, a lot of the songs sound very similar, making the album seem kind of "flat", if you will; the songs seem to run together. Overall, this is a very good album, and I really enjoyed listening to it, but the style diversity is lacking.  My Rating: 8.5 out of 10 Highlights: Excellent vocals Interesting musical style Enjoyable overall sound and feel to the album...
Read more

Like Moths to Flames - Dark Divine Review

By -
Image
Concise Summary: Well, here's another band that I haven't listened to very much. I've heard of Like Moths to Flames, but haven't explored their music very much. As such, I can't really say if this album is better, worse, or the same as their previous albums. However, what I can say is that I was pretty indifferent to Dark Divine. The first thing that really stood out to me is how little bass is in the mix on the album. I'm not sure if that's the new sound for metalcore, because Phinehas seems to be doing a similar mix on their new album Dark Flag (which I'm definitely going to review on this site). That mix sounded really weird at first, but I got used to it after awhile, and I would say it's definitely not a bad sound. As for the actual music on Dark Divine, I would say I was unimpressed. It definitely wasn't bad, and there are a few spots where it's really good, but I was left feeling like I just ate a piece of bread with nothi...
Read more

Red - Gone Review

By -
Image
Concise Summary: In my opinion, Release the Panic back in 2013 was a style transition album into Of Beauty and Rage, which, in turn, set the tone for Gone. However, I think that Of Beauty and Rage and Gone sound way too similar. Both albums seem to have apocalyptic themes to the lyrics, there's a lot of synth, the drums are electronic, there are really no technical guitar parts, and the singing is generally quiet with a few screams thrown in for some variety. Granted, it's a pretty unique sound, but having Of Beauty and Rage and Gone sound so similar, especially with regard to lyrical themes, is just... boring. In my opinion, each album should tell a different story, but Gone just seems to tell the same story that Of Beauty and Rage told: a vague, apocalyptic, dark, and fairly hopeless story. Because the story is so vague, it's not even like a two-part continuation. Apart from the story (or lack thereof), Gone is probably a better album than Of Beauty and Rage. ...
Read more