Beware the Heavens

Take one Children of Bodom, slow them down a bit, refrain from an overuse of keyboards, season with some classy Jesper Strömblad songwriting and add rollicking female vocals to it. You have the basic recipe for the band Sinergy: crisp, not too polished power metal with an amalgamation of excellent musicians bringing their skills to the table. But it doesn't quite work out for this first outing as well as it could have with the names behind the music: Sharlee D'Angelo (Arch Enemy, Mercyful Fate, and Witchery etc.), Jesper Strömblad (In Flames) and Alexi Laiho (Children of Bodom) all contribute to the proceedings.

The songs combine Alexi's signature fluid neo-classical fret-play and Jasper’s sturdy rhythm guitars into carefully pieced together songs that work out between their styles. They don't go as far as touching upon the work of their respective main bands, but they lay promising foundations to build upon in future (Jesper would depart from the line-up after this album though). You get sizeable helpings of your traditional speedy, balls out numbers in “Venomous Vixens” and “The Warrior Princess”, lightly keyboard laced mystique in “The Fourth World” and an offering from the hit-or-miss ballad category. Metal bands either have the art of the ballad down to an invigorating, emotionally stirring impact, or just fall limply by the wayside. Sinergy comes somewhere in between, as they seem to be trying hard on these types of songs, but never quite get it right.

Vocalist Kimberly Goss, for whom this is the first band she could call her own sounds a little watery at this stage, but makes up for it with frequent bursts of raw power. She has her own individual voice that isn’t trying to clone anyone, but can be reasonably compared to other singers like Doro Pesch.

They breach no new frontiers, but this serves as a testing ground on which to collect some ideas together and the results are positive, thus Sinergy has continued inexorably onwards since. However, it has a sour aftertaste since it’s clear that a band of this calibre could have pulled out all the stops on this and really made something worth hanging on to. It falters up against the other two releases, but those meaty, fulfilling tunes make it a keeper.