Artist: Forgotten Eden
Release: 2005
By accident, this little thing landed in my hands, made two years ago by metalheads from Veliko Ubeljsko near Postojna calling themselves Forgotten Eden. It’s not even clear whether it’s a debut or just an EP, since it runs a measly 27 minutes. There are eight tracks in total. Of those, one is a short intro, one is a short outro, and smack in the middle of the record sits another 23-second “filler”. So the real songs come to eight minus three, which makes five, to be exact!
It’s definitely nice that young metal bands are recording their own material, that stuff is “happening”, that the scene is growing, that new releases keep confirming that the metal movement in Slovenia is alive and kicking. But when you try to put “Forgotten Eden” up next to the rest of the world, you see that Slovenians (once again) can’t muster much more than average imitation. A typical middle-of-the-road effort from Slovenian soil, and a fresh victim of anonymity, going around in circles worshipping the melodic hard rock clichés set down by great idols like Van Halen or “hairy era” Whitesnake. The band’s sound leans heavily on sleaze/glam rock, and you can even catch melodic six-string leaps in there that echo the best of what was ever made in AOR (Journey, Shy, FM,…), and of course the guys didn’t forget to weave in figures lifted from typical power metal trends.
In the production, the bass line is almost completely cut off. There’s a big void, a wasted stretch of space between the front line (keyboards, guitar, vocals) and the rhythm section. The drums sound like rattling cardboard boxes. The guys can play, mind you. The guitarist is obviously music-school trained, but with no recognizable stance of his own. A good imitator when it comes to soloing. The vocals are too thin, especially in the mid to lower registers. The band’s bold move is an attempt at building multi-layered vocal harmonies, which you run into a bit less often with bands from the heavier end of the Šentflorjan scene. It’s meant to bring in melody and lift the mood, but at times, thanks to the incoherent production, the backing vocal multi-harmonies sound completely lost, and Forgotten Eden come off with them like a troupe of out-of-tune Carniolan nightingales. The lead vocalist is convincing in the high to highest registers and could cash in on that “inherited Halford-esque ace” even more in the future.
Forgotten Eden urgently need to find their own recognizable stance, and clear direction in the production of their material matters just as much. They’re a band with the know-how and the ambition, but what they need is a real vision that will clearly indoctrinate them and breathe soul and essence into them. Because right now, this first product is smugly empty and shrilly whining for an upgrade.
Lineup
Jure Počkaj – vocals, guitar
Edin Sabljakovič (Edo)- guitar
Iztok Kocen (Jimmy) – keyboards, backing vocals
Nejc Počkaj – bass guitar, backing vocals
Miha Nedoh – drums
Tracklist
1. Good Evening
2. NightFalls
3. Final
4. It’s My Love
5. Right Now
6. Not Now
7. Mankind (Falling Sand)
8. Mankind II (Ground 0)
Album length: 27.12
