Unbroken

I may very well be the world’s biggest fan of this bands first album. And I say this with a straight face, in all honesty it probably isn't the best speed/heavy metal album ever made, but it has done so much for me. It was the release which opened up clean vocals for me, it was the release which opened up cheesy music about goblins and magic, it quite simply opened up the entire world of power metal, speed metal, and heavy metal in a mere 60 minutes of brilliance. For this I love much it like a child would love a father who has taught them all the things he knows, or as the way Richard Gere's characters must love the women who always teach him how to love again. It is this reason that I say with total conviction that I am the worlds single biggest fan of "The Journey Begins", and that it is why it pains me so to see the total devastation of what this band used to be. It's like that child’s father has become an abusive alcoholic, or Richard Gere's film girlfriend has become a lesbian and broken his heart. Something has gone wrong during the 5 years after the magical world of the debut was displayed to the earth, and it hurts.

Despite keeping the exact same line up, every single element of the band has changed, and every one for the worst. The fast, surprisingly vicious and almost thrashy riffing style which made the band shine with an endless flurry of brilliant power/speed metal riffs is largely gone. Instead we are given dozen of limp wristed simple rhythm pieces reminiscent of later Metallica with a hint of metalcore melodies added in for good measure. Hell, there are even some breakdowns on this, I'm not saying this is a metalcore album, but most of the attempts at being a meaner band are realised through melodeth and metalcore aspects. The band is no longer a riff based one, they are now reliant on harmonies, and it doesn't work.

It's hard to believe that this is the same vocalist who stole the show in 2001, his powerful, melodic, yet slightly abrasive voice fitted in perfectly with the band, who was at the time powerful, melodic, yet slightly abrasive. What's gone wrong for Riccardo Mecchi is that he's gotten technically proficient at singing. His voice is cleaner, he's developed pitch control, and he has a lot more range with more falsettos and everything; but in the process he's lost that youthful energy which made him stand out from the crowd. Where before Mecchi just threw his whole heart into what he sang putting all his energy behind every line, and just happened to sound completely awesome. He now sounds like he could be able to pull off singing for Hammerfall or some other extremely smooth power metal band, but Anarion just aren't that type of band. He just sounds more standard now, and he helps drive Anarion deeper into the crowd. Fortunately, he has noticed that they're not a Euro styled band, and often tries to add in the rough edge that he once had... but sadly, he does this by trying to sound tough. Now since he's lost that harsher edge to his general vocal sound, he's had to resort to... something else. Something awful. It's not a scream, instead he does a horrible combination of a snarl and a whisper, sounding not dissimilar to Hetfield during the Load era. It's forced, and it sounds horrible, especially for a band who once traded in sheer grandeur. Mecchi doesn't do it in every song, but he does it enough, including the verses of the opener which just kicks everything off with a really foul taste in the mouth.

Adding to the already depleted vocal department, there is the only explicable change. Lyrics. While the line up is the same, the lyrics to the debut were written by the singer for Pegazus, Danny Cecati, who pulled out of the band just prior to recording. Turns out this was an absolute godsend, because while Cecati is a fairly stock standard vocalist, he knew his way with words, without his lyrical input things have gotten much, much, much more childish and idiotic, in a completely different, non goblin themed, way. These guys are absolutely horrid at writing lyrics and choosing themes. By about three songs in you'll be begging for them to mention some hobbits or Gollum or something to get away from all the horrible whining and whinging about relationships. Lyrics have degraded to the point where a big soaring vocal line can only be supported by the trite "You're full of shit/Your face makes me sick". Poetry at it's finest. The whole album is loaded with this crap. Hell, the only deviations are songs against corporations and the like, and a Christian number, which I assume must be a cover of some sort due to the lyrics being written by someone outside the band. Hell, there are some fairly cool lines, but once you realize the context it sounds completely stupid. For instance "Below" boasts the awesome lines:

"Pushed underground
Of hatred their bound
Of natural birth
Plague of the earth"

This would be an awesome line if it was about atomic mutants or a zombie army, but no, it’s about how plastic surgury effects the public perception on beauty and the desire to look perfect. Yep, that's a complaint you see on Today Tonight about Womans Day. It's pathetic.

Anarion's once brilliant rhythm section has been tainted, firstly, because of the new restricted and controlled style of the rhythm guitar (read as: Not riff driven), the bass work is largely standard and in line with them, with not too much interesting work going on. There are a few cool sections, such as the end of "Greed of Man", but typically it sits in the background. The drums are still played proficiently, but that’s the problem. They sounded awkward and wild on The Journey Begins, but they added colour to every second of the album. The bass drums were loud and flappy, and every hit of Luke Burnham's kit just added a strange and original sound to the album. All of this life is gone, and just like the vocals, the drums just sound like everyone else does now.

That's the main killer of Unbroken; everything that made the debut stand out has been completely omitted from the sound, and they just sound so very average, actually a little on the poor side of average. Everything on this album just doesn't stand out, the riffs are more or less keeping up the tempos for the higher pitched melodies, the drumming is just time keeping, the vocals are your standard power metal fare, just with an occasional attempt at being harsher with these terrible little snarls. In fact, there are only two things about this album that stand up to any sort of scrutiny, the acoustic sections which still sound nice, and soloing. These guys are fantastic at soloing; both Riccardo Mecchi and Steve Stergiadis both play amazing melodic and speedy technical solos on every song, making every song enjoyable for at least the 45 seconds they are working their magic, only to collapse back into the tedium of their pathetic excuse of riffs for the next five minutes.

Maybe the hardest to understand thing about this decision to suddenly be a boring characterless band is the fact there is no catalyst. The line up had been consistent for 5 years, they've garnered respect and had praise heaped on them for doing everything they've decided to not do here. It's a mystery for which there seems to be no answer, I'd invite you to try to figure it out for yourself, but I couldn't in all good conscious ask you to listen to this dull and generic album.