Master of the Aire

Someone on a forum posted a link to this album, describing it as "folkish metal, with flamenco guitars," which sounded appealing since I like Spanish guitar music, and I enjoy experimental metal styles. I've also heard a few other bands with acoustic guitar parts that border on the flamenco style, so I had a general idea of how good this fusion style could sound if done right. Naturally, I downloaded it right away, since I was curious to see how well this band that I've never heard of could fuse the two styles. I even made the typical newb mistake of assuming it must be a pretty good fusion band, since even their name combines both genres. Unfortunately, I was wrong.

Honestly, this barely even sounded like metal. If anything, I would describe this as a mediocre hard rock / jam band with sporadic and mostly pointless acoustic interjections. They seem so heavily focused on creating a flamenco / metal fusion that they ended up just throwing elements of both together, without actually stopping to consider how the structure and composition of the pieces would be affected. And let me tell you, the results were less than desirable. The final product ends up sounding nothing like either metal (at least not good metal) or flamenco and many of the songs are a chore to listen to. The riffs and solos really follow no path, there are no catchy melodies and nothing about this album is even remotely memorable other than the frustration of waiting in vain for it to get better.

The production is sub-par as well, as the distortion guitar sounds like it was recorded in someone's garage. The vocals were even worse. They were going for something that falls in between the standard low growl of a death metal band, and the high shrieks most common in black metal. The result was a mid range groan that sounds more like a teenager trying (quite unsuccessfully) to imitate a band like Dark Tranquillity.

As for ability, the instrumentalists all seem proficient with their instruments. However, their technical prowess is no substitute for the music's lack of creative integrity, or compositional structure. Fortunately though, there is one saving grace. The two acoustic songs (Peteneras and M.O.T.A Reprise) are both enjoyable to listen to and the remaining metal instrumental (Istvan) is decent, with the exception of the solo.

Overall, Flametal is not the best example of a flamenco / metal fusion band that one could conceive of, primarily due to their current inability to combine the two genres TASTEFULLY. Hopefully though, the idea will inspire others who can pull it off better than they did and I would look forward to hearing more of this style in the future from a more tonally articulate band.