Adventum

There's an underlying cheapness to this music which I find sort of amusing, as though this is a band who's trying to be more than they are, or perhaps attempting to do something particularly ambitious on a shoestring recording budget. 'Adventum' sounds like that old independently released album that came out a couple years before a band was signed to Nuclear Blast or something similar; it has all the elements of a big-name release without it ever really clicking together and standing on its own. It's kind of awkward though it has its good points, and overall feels like a release firmly planted on the fence between small and big-time, waffling one way or another occasionally but never fully committing to either. That being said, this is still an enjoyable album, if a little silly and ridiculous at times, and I do recommend it to extreme metal fans who can keep their laughter to themselves.

Dismissive as it sounds, the easiest way to describe this music is as a faster Dimmu Borgir. This is music firmly entrenched in that band's particular style of symphonic extreme metal, though certainly with a greater straight symphonic black/melodic death influence in the riffing department, and with generally more kinetic songs on the whole. Vocals are a nasal Shagrath snarl and the drumming isn't particularly far removed from Barker. The riffing is the central element differentiating Fatal Portrait from that better known collective; there's none of the rote industrial chugging of Dimmu Borgir to be found in this music, nor the overblown symphonic influences, depending mostly on layered guitars to give the music body and motion. Clean vocals are used sporadically in both amount and quality; sometimes they work relatively well and other times they're kind of tuneless, drenched in chorus effect in hopes that they'll sound more convincing and powerful. Like usual, it doesn't work.

This album forms a rather neat bridge between the typical melodic black metal sound and the less traditional symphonic extreme metal breed. Planted squarely between those two genres (though symphonic influences aren't actually employed), Fatal Portrait's music is decidedly accessible and catchy in nature, with no really intense abrasiveness anywhere to scare off a potential listener. It's certainly markedly more mainstream than most items in the underground, which doesn't necessarily make it bad; on the contrary, I kind of appreciate the open catchiness and the simple, engaging melodies- they're unpretentious and pretty damn good for an unknown Spanish band. At the same time, the band can get rather ahead of themselves with some of the ultra-dramatic guitar solos and declarative clean vocals, and I can't help but ask 'really?' at some key points in these tracks. Overall though, I find myself enjoying this more than I'm entirely comfortable with. Have to keep up credibility, you know.

If you enjoy Dimmu Borgir and the more accessible melodic black/symphonic extreme styles in general, this is certainly a good album to check out. Fatal Portrait does nothing particularly new, but they execute that relatively mainstream style of extreme metal in a professional and enjoyable manner. If you can stomach an album cover with colors on it, you might as well give this a shot; the band's trying as hard as possible and it shows.