Artist: BrainStorm
Label: AFM Records
Release: 2009
Length: 55:01
Rating: 3/5
These days, Brainstorm are stuck with the status of one of the main living standard-bearers of European power metal, forced to fight their way through the dark era of the genre’s current unpopularity. Luckily, things move in cycles. When brutality is in demand, melody gets pushed down. Still, Brainstorm defy it. They keep defying it, stubbornly. With their earlier body of work they built a name that’s now respected among connoisseurs of quality heavy metal.
With the album “Liquid Monster” (2005) the band started showing signs of sonic and stylistic change. They began softening their hard-wound pedigree and looking for answers in ever more melodic lead hooks. The structures got simpler to match, and the band started putting melody first.
Sure enough, the little mini “thrash” sticker worn by old albums like “Ambiguilty” (2000) or “Metus Mortis” (2001) finally peeled off sometime in the second half of the first decade of the new millennium. “Memorial Roots” confirms it. If anyone is suited to the band’s new situation down to the ground, it’s singer Andy B. Franck. He’s one of the finest vocalists in European heavy metal. With a slightly raspy, authoritative and polished melodic delivery that combines elements of Bruce Dickinson (Iron Maiden) with the dizzying heights of Michael Kiske (ex-Helloween), Andy gets even more room through the epic hooks of the new songs, inside pompous choruses that used to be anything but the rule in Brainstorm’s music. Think of the opener Forsake What I Believed, The Conjunction Of 7 Planets, Hailed Down Dreams or The Final Stege Of Decay (the last with a superbly placed melodic guitar solo in the middle instrumental passage). Even in the faster parts of the album like Ahimsa or Shiver, despite the rich rhythmic rolling and the lively, aggressive riffing of both guitars, melody takes the lead, and with it a higher level of pomp compared to the band’s earlier work. And together with it comes better use of Andy B. Franck’s vocal range. The whole thing is fueled further by the keyboards, which come through more than they did in the past.
After the less interesting and not exactly inspired predecessor “Downburst” (2008), “Memorial Roots” is once again a solid statement from this seasoned, battle-hardened German outfit. It still doesn’t reach the nobility, relentless bite and furious snarl of the band’s finest days, the creative period between 1997 and 2003 (the peak of the melodic metal “revival”), when they counted among the hardest and rawest “power” metal bands, ones that liked to dabble in elements of “thrash” metal.
“Memorial Roots” doesn’t give you the feeling of a poisonously wound-up escape into the (unimaginable) seventh gear. The hellish speed the band once hit on its old albums is captured in the song Cross the Line. But that’s not enough to flip the switch that sends the train down the track of a mid-tempo album, one commanded by the pomp of melodic, singable choruses.
The main criticism of this album goes to the production. The bass is cut way too thin and the snare sounds boxy, metallic, wimpy. You notice it especially when the drumming breaks into the rolling of the double bass pedals with the guitars lurking above in unison plucking of triad harmonies (see the song Victim), or in the calmer section inside the verse in The Conjunction Of 7 Planets, where such poorly filled sonic holes are really hard to miss. All the way through the album. The duo of Sascha Paeth and Miro, who produced albums in the past for highly melodic bands like Rhapsody Of Fire, Angra, Avatnasia, Edguy, may not be the most fitting choice for a band cut from Brainstorm’s cloth.
The album also doesn’t hold an equal level of quality in its songwriting. Songs like Victim, When No One Cares or Blood Still Stains are the less intense, less inspired moments of the album, where the band could have squeezed out more. That’s why the quality wobbles a bit. Luckily, Brainstorm close “Memorial Roots” with the stronger Would You, a contrasting dialogue between an aggressive verse and a bombastic, arena-ready chorus.
All in all, Memorial Roots isn’t a bad album, but it doesn’t reach the level you’d expect from veterans who know every studio trick in the book, like Brainstorm. So it’s not the level of the excellent Liquid Monster (2005), but it’s well above “Downburst” (2008), an album that manages to deliver enough for everyone who supports Brainstorm’s music, and always has, to fall in love with it. With it the band proves it has an innate sense for placing polished melodic hooks. If they keep pushing harder in that direction in the future, though, they’ll have to pay a lot more attention to the production itself. The effectiveness of the many moods (read: atmospheres) depends on it, and, hand on heart, in many ways “Memorial Roots” leaves the listener cold.
Lineup
Andy B. Franck – vocals
Torsten Ihlenfeld – guitar
Milan Loncaric – guitar
Antonio Ieva – bass
Dieter Bernert – drums
Production
Sascha Paeth & Miro
Track list
1. Forsake What I Believe
2. Shiver
3. The Conjunction Of 7 Planets
4. Cross The Line
5. Nailed Down Dreams
6. Blood Still Stains
7. Ahimsa
8. The Final Stages Of Decay
9. Victim
10. When No One Cares
11. Would You
