Artist: Silent Call
Label: Escape Music
Release: 2008
Rating: 3/5
Apparently the new wave of top-tier Scandinavian bands playing easy-to-love progressive metal is nowhere near slowing down. Here’s the debut from Swedish outfit Silent Call. And if I throw out names like Platitude or Seventh Wonder, that’ll be a pretty close approximation. A bit less complicated than the likes of Circus Maximus, especially when it comes to guitar solos and the keyboard – guitar interplay, but with an enormous dose of melody. In fact, everything in Silent Call is subordinate to that melodiousness. Compact, melodic choruses lodge in your ear on first listen, and the band manages to conjure up a varied dose of that chorus compactness from track to track, so the album stays super interesting, appealing, dynamic and consistently high-quality all the way through.
The heavier production comes as a bit of a surprise, with punched-up guitar riffs that bring Silent Call sonically close to even the likes of Germany’s Vanden Plas. The same goes for certain keyboard passages, as shown by, say, the short interlude Fallen and the transition into the beefy riff of Rise. Singer Andi Kravljaca (also of Seventh Wonder) at times recalls Andi Kuntz (Vanden Plas) in the way he shapes verses and vocal melodies, though not when it comes to timbre, even if Kravljaca is also a strong, convincing singer across the mid, high and highest registers, adding an extra helping of melody to the band’s sound.
The calm, mid-tempo, punchy half-ballad I Believe In Me proves these guys weren’t born yesterday, and that they have a real gift for combining catchy, perfectly fitting melodies that run through the pre-chorus-to-chorus stretches. Every link in the chain (the instruments) and the vocals coexist flawlessly, both in the production and in bringing out the big melodies this album is packed with. These big melodies also reach a high atmospheric level thanks to that typically Scandinavian school of melancholic melos, which gets extra depth from the keyboards alongside the front-and-center riffs. For all that melodiousness, Silent Call stay true to the progressive branch of metal, delivering repeated tempo changes in the songs, as well as shifts in the basic guitar phrases or motifs. But the main thread of their whole point remains that big, poisonously contagious melody from the first listen.
If your taste leans toward this kind of Scandinavian charm offensive, guided by the search for melodic perfection, while also offering top-notch technical playing along with epic scope and a bombastic atmosphere, and never dropping the quality bar at a single point, then Silent Call are made for you. They’ll also appeal to anyone who’s fired up about the “simpler” sounds of Brother’s Firetribe, H.E.A.T., or Leverage, but who also subordinate their expression to melodic perfection.
Lineup
Andi Kravljaca – vocals
Patrik Ulfström – keyboards
Daniel Ekholm – guitar
Tobbe Moen – bass
Mikael Kvist – drums
GUEST MUSICIANS:
Göran Edman – vocals
Daniel Flores – drums
Production
Silent Call & Martin Kronlund
Tracklist
1. My Way, My Time (4:50)
2. Outcast (4:21)
3. I Believe In Me (6:04)
4. Fallen (1:27)
5. Rise (5:03)
6. Hold On (5:08)
7. I Come Undone (4:39)
8. Divided (4:56)
9. Long Comes The Night (4:25)
10. Can’t Breathe (4:02)
11. Behold My Dreams (4:59)
12. Bloodred Sky (4:56)
13. The Chosen Path (4:06)
Album length: 58.56
