Artist: Frozen Tears
Label: My Graveyard Production
Release: 2007
Rating: 3/5
This Italian heavy metal quintet from Florence is back with its fourth straight studio album, titled “Nights Of Violence.” The material proves these guys are excellent musicians, a solid, well-rehearsed, compact crew with great working chemistry in the studio. The music they serve up sounds classic, much closer to the roots of the N.W.O.B.H.M., Judas Priest or Accept than to any revival power metal novelties. Even the opening roller Instability has that familiar Judas Priest/Accept galloping rhythm, and the experience is soon confirmed further on in Heart Of Stone.
Frozen Tears really fire up in the middle instrumental sections in particular, which are split into several complex passages flowing through all sorts of tempo changes and breakneck guitar solo escapes. Both guitarists pull these off as equals, and they link up with each other seamlessly. As a bonus the guys tacked on a closing track, a neat cover of Accept’s Run If You Can (“Breaker”, 1981). All these points show just how technically polished and accomplished the band’s members are.
The vocals are obscure enough in color to fit the heavy metal sphere. The singer mixes his basic lines and dresses them up with added “screams” straight out of the Rob Halford school. They haven’t forgotten to spice up the basic, melodic clean lines with “decorative” growls either (Who Am I?). Frozen Tears do have a bit more trouble with the choruses, though. Because of the vocal lines chosen, they’re too complex, and at times that blocks the build-up of the ultra-high-voltage charge the band manages to develop so effectively before the chorus. So it’s exactly at the points where the atmosphere should peak that the band somehow fails to land the final win, the kind that would let you say “Nights Of Violence” is a very good album. Some of that is down to an overeager urge to cram in different singing approaches (growls, high, ear-piercing “screams,” normal melodic clean vocals,…), which in a single song massively overcomplicate the need for a recognizable lead melody that would stick in your ear as quickly as possible, so the album loses its appeal here, since heavy metal punch takes a back seat at these moments. Of course the English verses add to the minus points too, but with Frozen Tears it’s not as distracting as with most of today’s heavy metal bands from the Italian “hot new wave.”
Besides the cool opener, the venomous Instability, the album’s highlight is the mid-tempo Fortress, its longest track, clocking in at just under 6 minutes. Here everything added up positively for the guys, and Fortress is, for example, a track whose atmosphere successfully builds through the pre-chorus and the passages and flows smoothly into a soaring, anthemic chorus. Here too the guys checkmate the listener with the track’s closing instrumental section, which carries a devilishly seductive melodic passage of fast-twitching triple guitar harmonies over the main motif, before we face the chorus once more.
Less complication in the vocal melodies would be a very useful move going forward, since the band could then develop even more effectively the punch and dramatic atmosphere that heavy metal demands, and Frozen Tears’ music as a whole would gain in compactness, fluidity and, of course, polish. With “Nights Of Violence,” Frozen Tears show continued solid potential for growth. The fact that it took them four jolly-jumps, that is, four studio albums, to get here is worrying, since they’ve clearly hit their creative zenith, and with the verdict that “Nights Of Violence” is (yet again) a good Frozen Tears album, the band should be anything but satisfied.
Lineup
Alessio Taiti – vocals
Leonardo Taiti – guitar
Lapo Torrini – guitar
Massimiliano Dionigi – bass
Giovanni Guarnieri – drums
Track list
1. Instability
2. Queen of Solitude
3. Heart of Stone
4. Don’t Waste Your Time
5. Who Am I?
6. The Fortress
7. Stories
8. Child’s Prayer
9. The Prison
10. Run If You Can (bonus skladba)
Trajanje albuma: 49.34
