This is a US band playing straight up metal with one of the most frustrating opening tunes ever! Instead of giving you the “metal” straight away, the first track ‘Will The Light Come’ begins like a ballad and takes a while to kick I, in fact it takes a couple of tracks to really hit the mark with ‘Doomsday’. Following the slow burning start, you have a dull guitar sound that doesn’t really help matters much which lacks sustain and is actually very much akin to most releases of the 90’s that were considered traditional metal, the trend is consistent. Some of the arrangements and music hark back to the 80’s hey days and you can find pleasing similarities to bands like Exxplorer and even that of progressive thrashier bands from that period from time to time on this album.
Whilst I am pleased the band have gone for it by themselves without the use of auto-tune on the vocals, I am also cringing at some of the notes that are unfortunately attempted and missed in a couple of places (you will hear this on the opening tune), but it does give you a genuine experience something that you can expect from a live show from Omega Reign. ‘Arise’ is presented with pretty cool artwork and the sound quality is ok but it does lack on the whole consistent energy level as there are a lot of ballad-esque slow tracks mixed amongst the metal tunes, perhaps the track running order coupled have been refined? The guitar work is tight, the music in general is tight by overall comparison, but my reservations still reside with some of the vocal melodies and notes attempted as I mentioned earlier.
Not a bad release on the whole, but it could do with a kick in the rear in some quarters to improve the listening experience but I would not go as far as to say that you should avoid this release, far from it, I simply found it rather patchy in places and this mainly resides with the track order.
(6/10 Paul Maddison)
Leave a Reply