Enchantya - Dark Rising

Enchantya

Dark Rising

by Rebecca Miller at 21 February 2013, 11:53 AM

“Dark Rising” is Portugese band ENCHANTYA's first full length album having released their EP “Moonlighting The Dreamer” in 2006. With vocalist Rute Fevereiro doing both Operatic vocals and Death growls, it’s certainly an interesting album, and it impressed me a fair bit.

It’s a very well structured release, with the first track – “Unwavering Faith” – being a nice little instrumental lead in to the rest of the album. All of the songs afterwards flow together pretty well, and overall it feels very smooth. It’s got high production values – the vocals and guitars are very crisp and clear. I think my favorite song from “Dark Rising” is “Winter Dreams”, it feels a lot more emotional than the other tracks on the album, and has a nice little rhythm to it. Looking at the album as a whole, it’s pretty solid, but a couple of the specifics bugged me, which I’ll get to later. It was an enjoyable album to listen to, and it didn’t really have any elements that jarred me out of the experience, it sounds to me like all the members of the band gel really well to produce some good music.

Let me start this bit by making one thing clear – Rute Fevereiro is without a doubt a very talented singer, that’s more than evident when for the majority of the album she’s singing in an Operatic style (think Amy Lee). But there’re times on the songs when she decides to do Death vocals, and I’m not a huge fan of these moments. It just sounds forced to me and kind of threw me out a little bit. My favorite thing about “Dark Rising” has to be the guitar solos though – in a word, they’re epic.  There’s definitely a group of very talented musicians at work here. Every song was different enough as well so that I didn’t feel like I was getting déjà vu whilst listening to it.  To be honest, I don’t think “Dark Rising” has done anything groundbreaking, but it’s solid enough, and I don’t think it’ll disappoint anyone who is into this sort of Metal.

It will be interesting to see where ENCHANTYA head next – especially whether or not they keep the growls which a lot of people have mistaken for two different singers. However, it’s a standard, good quality Metal album, and I certainly wouldn’t steer anyone away from it.