New Finds – LXVIII
Seeing as I generally add another post in this series when I really need to post something non-personal on a certain day, it should go without saying that this one is also rushed, but at least it really deserves the title, because the included bands are actual new finds, and I actively looked for two new bands after happening to stumble upon the first one and deciding to try to stick to the same country, which in this case is Brazil, for the other two as well. Not that I didn’t check the list first, and I even found a Brazilian band with new material released within the past year and not already included in such a post, but I left it for another time… While on the other hand I removed one which had split up several years ago.
The band that I just happened to stumble upon is Enorion, but the recent release that made me click when I noticed it among the suggestions is a cover, so I won’t link to that one, going with the self-titled song and Time to Understand, which is their first one. Then again, there’s only one other original song in between, and that features Fabio Lione as vocalist, just like that recent cover, plus a lengthy instrumental bridge that sounds pretty much like what you’d expect in one of that guy’s songs and therefore not something I’m fond of. Of course, they sing power metal and seem to aim for that sort of sound, but those two songs seem to sound a fair bit better to me, even those instrumental bridges being much more appealing, especially in case of Time to Understand, so I hope they won’t focus too much on their collaboration with Fabio and lose their own direction in the process.
The second band is BrightStorm and it’s just their recent release, The Awakening, that makes them the most interesting among the three from my point of view. Admittedly, their other songs are rather different, and I’d say that even the second pick, Vampire, isn’t exactly representative, but it’s not like I usually care for such things, the picks just being songs that I prefer. Either way, while not extraordinary, the vocals are good enough and that goes for pretty much the entire package. They do seem far less confident and polished than a bad that’s apparently been around for well over a decade probably should be, and that may also mean that this is pretty much all they can do, but it is also possible that there’s still room for improvement, and their newer songs do sound better than the older ones.
As for the third band, that’s Inside Shadows, they just have three songs and the first one has some growls, so I’ll obviously go with the other two, Torn Apart and Against the Time. There are moments when the vocals do sound somewhat “broken”, but the overall sound and the instrumental parts are good enough and, even though they seem to have been around since 2019, at least in some form, they’re clearly just starting out in practical terms, so there should be plenty of room for improvement.
