Burning Insight

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.