Burning Insight

Hailing from Sweden, a country steeped in melodic death metal history, it perhaps should come as no surprise that Frantic Amber's debut album is one of the better debuts I've heard come from the genre in the last couple years. Well produced and well played, Burning Insight hints at a potentially great career ahead of this band, and I look forward to hearing what they'll have to offer in the coming years.

Starting with an atmospheric keyboard intro that reminds me of the closer from Slaughter of The Soul, "The Flames of The End", Burning Insight wastes no time kicking your teeth in with the title track hitting hard and fast, with a galloping main riff, and plenty of interesting transitions to keep you headbanging the whole time. Like most of the album, the title track really puts the melody in melodic death metal, and still retains all the aggression needed to make this album so punchy. A lot of the riffs on the album consist of the bass and rhythm guitar laying the groundwork with fairly simple, catchy chord-based riffs, and the lead guitar providing the melody, playing high-pitched licks over this solid base. The guitar solos are tastefully done, appearing on about half the songs, and never lasting any longer than they should. There's no wankery here whatsoever by any of the instruments, with all of them playing exactly what they should to compliment each other and create a solid final product.

One of the first things I noticed when listening to this album was the bass. It's nice and loud in the mix, not overbearingly so, but loud enough that you can clearly hear it on most songs, and it provides Burning Insight with plenty of backbone. I'm always happy to find a band that uses the bass as more than just a lower-pitched rhythm guitar, and it's refreshing to be able to hear it rumbling throughout this entire album. The bass works well with the technically outstanding drums that provide a solid beat when they need to, but still mix it up with fills aplenty and some tom beats on the quieter sections, making this album's rhythm section a standout element.

Guitar tone on Burning Insight is fairly standard for melodeath, mid-ranged with lots of bite, distorted but not fuzzy. You can expect much the same sound from the guitar as you would get on an Amon Amarth album, and when backed up by the aforementioned bass, it is a pleasure to listen to. The clear, open production brings out the guitar (as well as all the instruments) nicely, allowing all of them to share the spotlight equally along with vocals.

I guess I'll make the obvious comparison to Arch Enemy when it comes to the vocals, although Frantic Amber's are for the most part higher pitched, going a little deeper at times, but for the most part staying in the At The Gates range of high pitched. Growls are used almost exclusively, but when the clean vocals show up, they're really well done, and sparingly used, only appearing on soft sections on two or three songs. Although the vocals are great, the lyrics are not, and are the one weak point of the album, sounding dangerously close to something an angsty teenager might write, with references to self-harm, and choice lines like these from "Wrath of Judgement":

I am rough
Denying you to polish me
With your mainstream bullshit
I will not change
You cannot make me
I am in control

Or these Katy Perry sounding lines from "Soar":

Soar
Spread your wings and fly
It's your time, it's your time, time to shine
So soar
Spread your wings and fly away
I'm coming home

These probably won't be an issue for most people, and it doesn't significantly detract from my enjoyment of the album as a whole, as the riffs are too good for the lyrics to pull me out of them, but if you like to read the lyrics while listening to an album, you might not get as much out of these lyrics as you would from say, an average Opeth album.

Lyrics aside, this is absolutely an album worth picking up, both a good representation of the genre, and an excellent first impression of what this band is all about. I wouldn't be surprised to see them going places in the near future, and if they continue to release music as good as Burning Insight, they will surely solidify the place they've begun to carve for themselves with this more than worthy debut.

I've been waiting a while for this to be released, and it was finally made available worldwide today. Frantic Amber have already gathered a decent following for a band that has only just come out with their debut album, but that's for very good reason and that's shown here. In a similar way to Bloodshot Dawn's first album, it would surprise most people to know that Burning Insight isn't the second or third attempt from the band. It's an incredibly mature release by a band that's only just starting out.

First things first, this is a modern Gothenburg band. That is to say, it's not for everyone. It's not hard to see why they've been likened to Arch Enemy, but Burning Insight is a hell of a lot better than what's come from AE recently. What I want to get across though is that Frantic Amber is not a shameless clone of Arch Enemy or In Flames or At the Gates. There's something distinctly different about the way they play, most notably in the drums. Mac Dalmanner likes to keep the double bass hammering away constantly, but equally he plays very technically throughout, something that melodeath bands sometimes seem to ignore.

Besides Mac's drumming, the leads have a lot more variety in them than most bands. When you hear an Arch Enemy song, you know that Michael Amott is the one playing it because his style is very defined. I'm a big fan of Mike's leads, but Burning Insight is a nice listen because there's so much more variety on offer. Listen to the tracks 'Ghost' and 'Bleeding Sanity' as examples of the different things that the band will do. Whatever the song, the leads are always beautifully crafted and the rhythm behind it always adds a real crunching force to the band. There isn't a dull track across the entire album, and the pace never slows down. It's all hard hitting and the fifty minute run-time passes in the blink of an eye.

The vocalist Elizabeth Andrews is getting a lot of comparisons to Angela Gossow, and to be fair I can kind of see why. Her growls are quite low and always very dark, although she doesn't scream with the fury that you would get listening to Angela. Everything's clear and easy to understand, something that isn't always the case. I also like the cleans on 'Drained' and 'Awakening', and despite the fact that they don't appear anywhere else they are surprisingly good and don't feel as out of place as you might imagine. The one problem I have is that sometimes her voice sounds like it has one too many layers every now and again, but it isn't anywhere near as bad as on Arch Enemy's Doomsday Machine.

Given the quality of this entire record, it's difficult to say that any one song is a cut above the rest. I loved the title track and thought it was the best initially, but 'Ghost' and 'Drained' have come to be my personal favourites. None of the others are worth skipping either, but those two really stand out for me.

Overall, this is the kind of thing that I wish appeared more often in melodeath. Burning Insight is exactly the calibre that I'd expected Amott & Co. to come up with for War Eternal, and it's safe to say that Frantic Amber are worth watching for the future. I'm excited to see what they come out with next, and hopefully this is just the start of what they can do.