Beyond the Dark

Ancara, a band that was founded in the 80’s, went through a couple of name changes and in 2007 they released their second full length album Beyond the Dark. Band had garnered some recognition at this point and their album was released under a record label called High and Loud, which was founded by Timo Kotipelto in 2001.

The results speak for themselves as Beyond the Dark is a professionally done album that sounds a bit heavier than their debut. Ancara’s style of heavy metal is very straight to the point with clear influences from 80’s heavy metal, hair metal and rock n’ roll bands. Production on the album is very clean with a heavy and audible bass in the mix.

There’s an anthemic style in the vocals on many choruses on the album. And much like the album cover suggests sometimes you feel like being lost at sea which is emphasized at two songs by Riku Niemi’s orchestrations. These are basically ambient elements in the background. Niemi has been a session member on a few albums for bands like Stratovarius and Nightwish.

In the song Cranium Tension the band tips their hats toward Hanoi Rocks with a very similar riff from their song Tragedy. Some songs are maybe showing hints of Iron Maiden or power metal, but in the end the sound and style is kept very much radio friendly rock infused heavy metal. Nothing is very fast or solo oriented. Clearly 80’s vibes brought to a modern package and Sammy Salminen shows he can really sing everything from the clean singing in slow and mid-tempo to rock and even some power metal falsettos at one song on the record.

Ancara shows up with some interesting moments on the record having couple of songs to check out, like In Silence, Scarred or maybe Cranium Tension for the Hanoi Rocks fans out there. Depending how much you like basic rock n’ roll or heavy metal this might be a fulfilling record, but in the and I was only pleasantly surprised because I had zero expectations about the album.